THE BIG ONE
by Scottishlass
Summary: Ooh, look! An official title and summary: The One Real Thing, By Centaur and Scottishlass. Neo and company discover the strength within themselves...and how its the most powerful weapon of all.
1. Part I

Author's Note: Here it is folks, part one of THE BIG ONE. I've got three more parts in the working stages, but after writing for one full year on this (it began as just a glimpse into Neo and Trinity's weird oh, wow, I'm-in-love-with-you relationship.) I recently decided I need some help (I'm tired and want to finish it up), so Centaur will be joining me on the next installment (Oh, yeah). 

All ideas are original, although they may have been duplicated by others over the time (hell, these thoughts aren't _that_ profound) but I began it right after I saw the film, FYI. The rating is for some naughty language and, yes, a love scene. Enjoy. Oh, by the way, we can play "name this piece" if you'd like!

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Death brings a stillness. A numbness, a denial. Makes you question your own existence, she thought. They'd parted ways to grieve, allowing each other a scrap of dignity. All was communal on the ship except for this. A time to accept death, to wrestle with your feelings before you shared them with others.

It was a strange mixture of sadness and joy; the loss of a family, the discovery of a hero. A newfound love. It was profound.

Trinity honestly didn't know where they were. Alone, most likely, numbing the pain with mundane daily tasks, or sleeping it away. They'd shared a moment of silence together after the ordeal, covering the bodies without a sound, a tribute to a family they would never have again. Morpheus had stood like a captain who'd gone down with his ship but was rescued against his will. Tank stared blankly at the largest form, his brother.

"I'm going to contact Zion," their leader murmured after an unmeasured pause. "We have lost our crew. But we have found the One." He did not look at them before departing. 

Time slipped away; the stillness that comes with death set in. 

Trinity sat quietly in Neo's cabin, gently running a damp washtowel over Neo's forehead. They had not parted company since their captain had gone into hiding. He was sleeping, mentally exhausted. She ran the damp over Neo's forehead, wiping away the last traces of sweat and grime. Absorbed in the task, she barely heard Morpheus approach.

He stood at the doorway, smiling for the first time in days at the picture in front of him. Almost like an old legend, Madonna and child. She sensed him there, and without taking her eyes off Neo, she quietly spoke to her old friend. 

"He is the One."

"I told you he was," he answered in his deep, baritone voice. "Now you are part of him."

Her liquid blue eyes broke away from her patient, her eyebrows drawn together. "I don't know if I can do this," she whispered earnestly. "We barely know each other."

"Yet you _are_ truly in love." 

Morpheus remained in the doorway. "You need to spend some time together, Trinity. A time for thinking; a time for grieving. Someplace peaceful, relaxing..."

"Not here," they said together, knowing the condition of the ship and the dangers that awaited them. 

"Should we..." she began.

"No. You're not going back in there. Not yet."

She pictured herself and Neo in the Matrix, lying together on a secluded beach, hiking in the forest; hell, even eating dinner at a cheap restaurant would suffice. Anywhere but here.

"You can't do this in the Matrix, Trinity."  


"I know," she breathed. "It needs to be real." She looked back to Neo, stroking the short fuzz of his hair. "He at least deserves that."

She allowed herself a glance back at Neo before joining Morpheus in the doorway. They embraced. 

"I can't cry," she whispered shakily. "I can't even cry."

"It will come when it's right, Trinity. You have reason to grieve. But you also have reason to celebrate. It's hard to allow for both emotions."

She nodded. "Are you okay?"

"I will be. In the meantime Tank and I are going to start repairs on the ship. Zion has deployed several construction modules to help us rebuild, and they'll probably send a few mechanics along as well." He lowered his voice. "They'll probably take the bodies with them. They should reach us in a few hours or so. I'll wake you. Until then, try to get some sleep."

They embraced again before she headed back to the sleeping figure on the cot.

"And Trinity" said Morpheus said quietly before disappearing into the quiet depths of the ship, "thanks for finally telling him."

Trinity finished bathing Neo; he continued to sleep soundly. She covered him with a thin, soft blanket and laid down beside him. She gently curled to his side, wrapping her arm around his middle, burying her face in his neck.

Sleep was not an option. The ship was now alive with the sounds of repair, most likely by Tank, who usually released his anger with a torch and a hammer. It was dark save the emergency lighting, leaving her vision a ghostly black-and-white. Yet her senses were bombarded with new, unreal sensations. She had never _really_ been that intimate with a man before. Not in the real world, anyway. Yet here she was, utterly real, lying on a gray cot in a dingy metal room, inhaling the scent of his skin. Neo. She spoke his name in a hushed whisper, feeling her own hot breath against his pale skin. He stirred in his sleep, sighing. 

She closed her eyes, remembering how they kissed earlier that day. It was the most unique sensation she'd ever experienced. It wasn't one of those sloppy open-mouthed kisses she remembered from her pre-removal days, nor was it platonic. Neo had defeated the agents, and they pulled him back just in time. And as the ship sat in darkness after the power surge, she released him from the chair and he clasped her face in his hands, seeking her mouth. For the first time ever, she really kissed a man. Gently, ever so softly, she moved her mouth against his ending the kiss by gently sucking his lower lip. Seconds later, the power was restored and the crew made their way in to see if Neo was all right. They had eyes only for each other.

So this was love.

This oneness. It was almost overwhelming. Terrifying. 

__

This is far from what I should be feeling now, she thought. _I can't even cry._

"Trinity..."

Her eyes opened as he spoke to her through the darkness. "You're here."

"Of course I'm here, Neo."

He moved to put his arms around her, trying to draw her close. The effort was exhausting.

"Shh," she whispered, lying him back down. "I'll stay here."

"I want to be close to you."

"Just stay like that," she whispered close to his ear, arranging herself more comfortably next to him. She propped herself up on one elbow so she could peer at him through the dim light of the room. He opened his dark eyes to look at her. 

"We did it," he whispered huskily. "We beat them."

"For now."

He kept his eyes open as long as he could, eventually letting his lids droop. 

"How do you feel?" she asked tentatively.

"My head is pounding."

She rubbed his forehead gently. "I can imagine. What you did in there was amazing."

"I didn't do it alone, Trinity." He weakly smiled at her, not opening his eyes. 

A long, sweet silence passed between them.

"Hey," he murmured, breaking the stillness, "will you do something for me?"

"Of course." Trinity smiled at him as she gently traced his face with her fingertips.

"Kiss me again. Kiss me like you did before."

"Neo...I don't know if this is the right time..."

"Please..." He licked his lips tentatively. 

She bent over him, cautiously, before lowering her lips to his and kissing him gently. He moaned, a barely audible utterance that expressed everything she was trying to put into words. It was amazing. A simple kiss, mouth to mouth, a sensation that made her heart pound furiously. So real. 

She parted from him, staying inches away from his face. He opened his eyes, pupils adjusting to take her in.

"I love you," he breathed, taking Trinity's crumbling form into his arms. "Don't leave."

"I won't," she answered softly, snuggling into his side. 

Trinity tried to follow Neo into oblivious sleep, but the best she could do was allow herself to be lulled into a peaceful state of consciousness by the sound of Neo's shallow breathing. The ship still hummed, but Tank had moved elsewhere in the ship now, allowing her some blissful moments of peace. The glow of the emergency lighting reminded her of something from her previous life: candles. Somewhere between the worlds of sleep and awareness the remembered the flowery perfume of candles, their light dancing on the walls of her dingy dormroom as she pored over programming texts. Good student by day; lone hacker by night.

Memories tangled with dreams. That world, those college years, were so soft and full of a feeling she hadn't felt in several years. The phone would ring; it was her mother again: "Hello, sweetie, how are you doing up there all by yourself?" All by herself, alone, unnoticed by co-eds and professors alike. It didn't matter. She knew, even then, that there was more. 

By day her world was hazy, soft and faceted, like the patchwork of dancing light that shown through the stained glass window of her old church. Memories were scattered now, crumbling as each day out of the Matrix brought her more in touch with the reality. The world was not soft, or even comfortable. It was a cold place of extremes and she, a soft, living body, was trapped in this inescapable tomb of fire and steel. Somehow the loneliness of the Matrix was easier to handle in it's warmth; here the need for companionship seeped in slowly and chilled her to the bone. But she knew deep down there really wasn't any other place for her. Here she had a family. Now, only Morpheus, her father, her friend, and Tank, the brother who adopted her during her first few weeks, were left. But they were alive, still alive, out of the tomb that held the collective human race prisoner. 

Neo twitched and breathed in heavily, stirring her thoughts back toward the peacefulness of the now. The cot was getting uncomfortable, sagging in the middle. It was definitely not meant for two. Why should it be? The type of human companionship that would require a double bed was simply unheard of outside of Zion. Sure there were the occasional relationships, but they used the makeshift beds for something other than sleeping. They were the front line, the men on active duty. Zion didn't want crewmates to get too attached to each other, simply because emotional soldiers are slow thinkers. And a slow mind will get you killed.

The man sleeping in her arms twitched again, murmuring something she couldn't understand. She drew herself closer to him, and as sleep finally took her, she wondered if she'd ever return to the city where candles still occasionally flickered. 

"Do you remember fire?"

Trinity slowly opened her eyes. Neo was already awake, rolled on his side, facing her. "What, Neo?" she mumbled, shaking off fatigue.

"Fire. Do you remember fire."

She propped herself up on her elbow to study him more closely. "Of course I remember," she replied, yawning, "I remember almost everything. Why do you ask?"

Neo pressed himself closer to her. "I'm freezing." He paused for a moment. "It's awfully cold here. Cold in this ship. God only knows what it's like outside."

"We don't go outside."

"Shit," he mumbled. "You know, I dreamt last night of fire. In a fireplace. I'd been in the city so long, I don't even remember the last time I sat around a fire. Camp, probably, in the sixth grade."

He searched her eyes, looking desperately for understanding. 

"I dreamt of a fire, inside, like in a cabin. And it was so cold outside, there was snow. Lots of snow. And inside the cabin I sat by the fire. Crackling, popping..." He exhaled, rubbing his hands over his face. "I was alone. So alone. And then I was warm. You were there and you held me. We sat for hours, talking, looking into the fire. You curled your arms around me and held me close."

Her eyes welled with tears, she looked up to blink them away. "I don't even know you, Neo." She sniffed, feeling the blood come to her cheeks. "I don't even know how it's possible to feel like this. I don't know that it's right to feel like this after all that's happened here..."

"You know I'm scared to touch you," he said after awhile, avoiding her eyes. "Sometimes I'm even scared to even be by you. I'm scared to touch your hair, your skin..." He reached to bring her face level with his. "I'm scared to feel you, Trinity." His brown eyes searched hers. "When I'm with you I feel so much...I don't know." He blinked and averted his eyes. 

"Neo..."

"God, Trinity..." He inhaled, shaking his head. "I can't tell you how I feel. I just feel...full. Full of you..."

Neo sat up, thinking, rubbing his hand over his shaved head.

"Shit, Trinity," he said at last. "I fall in love for the first time in my life with a woman I barely know in a fucked-up world that I'm supposedly in control of... and I'm scared to even kiss her. 'Cause the instant I do she's gonna dissolve like the rest of everything else in my life." His face cracked then, eyebrows scrunching and mouth crumbling in an expression of utter despair. "God," he whispered, "I can't do this."

"You can, and you will, Neo," whispered Trinity sitting up to join him. She took his hands in hers and stared deeply into his brown eyes. "I know you can."

"Trinity," he whispered, meeting her gaze, "you are so strong."

She smiled at him, and gently bit her lower lip.

"I know how you feel...about us," she eventually said, slowly reaching for his other hand. "I'm terrified. But I know this is real. I can feel that it's real." Slowly, in a gesture of all-encompassing friendship, she held his hand to her heart. He could feel the burn of her skin, the pounding of her heartbeat beneath her thin, tattered clothing. Her eyes never wavered, never left his, as she proclaimed all that she felt: "I love you, Neo."

Neo awoke to the familiar grinding of the opening door. His eyes adjusted to the light; it was Tank.

Neo gently unwrapped himself from Trinity and joined Tank in the doorway. 

"Hey buddy," Tank said hoarsely. His usually friendly greeting lacked its usual warmth. "How're you doing'?"

"Better than you, looks like," Neo responded, gesturing to Tank's bandaged shoulder.

"Doesn't hurt. I'm okay. Morpheus sewed me up. I'm beginning to wish I had some plugs, man. Could sit in a hot tub for a few hours." He smiled a fleeting grin that dissolved as quickly as it came. 

"Are you really okay?"

Tank paused, breathing in a heavy sigh. "I will be. I will be."

Neo placed his hand on the larger man's shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said earnestly.

"I wanted to let you know that the repair crews have arrived," Tank began, trying to shrug aside his pain. "If you see Trinity, will you let her know, too?"

Neo stepped aside. "She's in here."

"Oh. Um, well, than you can tell her. I'll be up in the core; Morpheus would like you two present for the...farewell."

Tank took one tentative peek into the darkness, looking for Trinity, before leaving.

Neo had sensed his uneasiness; Trinity and Tank were like brother and sister, and Neo could easily understand how unnerving it must be for Tank to realize that one of his family members had found a lover. Neo repeated the word in his mind...lover...he barely had a clue as to how to begin this relationship that already seemed so permanently established. He knew nothing about Trinity's experience in the Matrix, or who she was outside of "red alert" mode. Shit, they'd barely had any time to talk. He'd been unplugged now for how long? Less than a few months, he was sure. Time no longer had a meaning. He longed to sit with her for hours, to see her smile, listen to her stories, kiss her lips... And when was he going to have any time for that anyway, amidst this pain and suffering? 

"Is this really necessary, Morpheus?" Trinity asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

"Yes. Don't fight me on this one, Trinity," said their captain, sounding less commanding than usual, his voice tainted with a combination of sadness and fatigue. "You need some good peace and quiet. Plus, I'm going to be resting in there for a few days and I need my first in command in the best shape she can be in. Understand?"

Neo sensed her discomfort and squeezed her hand under the table.

Trinity nodded, obviously displeased.

"Look," Morpheus began, his tone beginning to take on more authority. "You're not going in the Matrix, you're going in the construct. You need some rest. Real rest, mental rest. Rest from this ship..."

He turned his solemn eyes toward Trinity. "Trinity, you and Neo have been working non-stop the past few days, despite the fact that I ordered you to let the repair crews do their job. I think you two need some time just to talk without me and Tank running about this ship."

He thought deeply and chose his words with care. "Besides, I could use some time to myself. I need some time...to say...goodbye."

Trinity nodded, understanding.

"So you're going, just for a while, and then you're coming back. No arguments."

"I don't see how this is going to help," Neo whispered under his breath to Trinity as Morpheus stood to leave.

"Neo," called Morpheus over his shoulder, "what's good for the mind is good for the body."

"Where to, captain?" Tank asked Neo.

Trinity answered for him. "Cabin by the Pacific. Evening. May."

Neo raised his eyebrow before the powerful electrical impulses overtook him.

Neo opened his eyes to find himself before a blazing fire, Trinity in his arms. "A fire," he whispered. 

"Yeah. I remembered your dream."

"This place is great," he said, looking around at the rustic furniture. Without looking he knew he was sitting on a bearskin rug. "Who programmed this?" he asked.

"I did, actually. I always wanted to have a cabin on the sea before I was unplugged. We all programmed places we could go to if we needed a break from the ship. Just easy ways of finding a calmness. This is mine."

"Wow. It's great."

"Not bad. It's a good escape."

"It's not what I pictured your dream escape would be."

She laughed. "Oh really? What did you picture?"

"Rome."

"Shit," she laughed, faintly blushing.

"This is so strange, Trinity. We're sitting here, together, but we're really not. That blows my mind."

"Try not to think about it that way, Neo. I know you, you know me. We're just meeting here. A meeting of the minds." She smiled at her word choice. 

"Yeah. Minds."

"You want something to eat? I betcha Tank whipped us up something good."

"We can eat in here?"

"Could you eat in the Matrix?" she called over her shoulder as she walked to the kitchen.

He shrugged her shoulders, his eyes following her movements.

"Hey," he noticed, "no leather."

"Hope you don't mind."

He studied her, watching the gauzy skirt swirl around her ankles and bare feet as she rummaged through the kitchen. She had chosen to wear several layers of thin shirts that clung snugly to her torso. A silvery, loosely-woven sweater jacket hung limply from her shoulders. It was the first time he'd seen Trinity wearing something other than her ship clothes or her Matrix leathers. It was different. He liked it.

He examined himself: he wore black loose-fitting pants and a long-sleeved dark gray tee shirt. 

"How come we always wear black?" he called to her.

She joined him again with two glasses of lemonade. "Switch often wore white."

His eyes dropped. "I'm so sorry, Trinity."

"Don't be."

"Want to talk about it?" 

"Yes. But not yet."

He nodded as she handed him his glass. She watched as he raised it to his lips, took a sip, and swallowed.

"Holy shit."

"Tastes good, huh?" she smiled. 

"Yeah. Just like I remember."

She sipped her lemonade slowly, savoring its sweet acidity. 

"You know," she began, "I like my leathers, but this is a hell of a lot more comfortable."

"Yeah, nice selection," he agreed, indicating his own clothes.

"About wearing black..." she began, "I don't think we always did. But it came to a point where, when we were in the Matrix, we felt too...at home. Could you imagine me patrolling the bandwidth in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt?"

Neo smiled at the thought.

"Anyway, a generation or so before me started wearing black. We'd add our own personal touches of color, but we mostly opted for bad-ass black leather. It makes me feel like I can kick the shit out of anyone. Unbreakable."

Nodding, Neo took another sip of the lemonade.

"I used to love that feeling," she continued softly, "but I'm realizing now we've been too hard for too long. Because now, when you really want to break, you can't."

"There are a few things I still don't understand." Neo sank his feet into the sand, enjoying its coolness and texture.

"Like what?"

"Like science. Discovery, invention... all of that's programmed? I mean, why would they give us an opportunity to cure diseases... you know, stuff like that. Shit, they even make us think we reproduce."

"Think of it this way, Neo," Trinity began softly. "You could have essentially lived the same day over and over again without even realizing it. Your memories of the previous day, previous year... all that, in theory, could have been programmed."

"Is that the way it works?"

"No. We don't understand all of it in its entirety, but we know that they let the human brain make choices and decisions and basically carry out your life the way you wish to live it. It's a whole lot safer that way. More people would eventually begin realizing something was awry."

Neo studied Trinity, waiting for her to continue. 

Staring at the sea, Trinity carefully chose her words. "They've managed to capture it, Neo. Everything about human life. Did the Oracle ask you about fate?"

"Morpheus did."

"Did you believe in fate?"

"No."

She nodded. "I didn't believe in fate either. I believed in God, this power, you know?"

"You believed in God?" he asked, incredulous.

She eyeballed him; he held his tongue.

"Yes. But I believed we still could make our own choices. It was like there was one being who knew all the paths you could take and presented them to you, and let you choose."

She paused, momentarily, to study the thin line where sea met sky. "The machines managed to play God," she said eventually.

"You still believe in God, Trinity?"

She turned to face him, her cheeks reddening from the strengthening wind. "I was beginning to wonder myself. But now, Neo, I do."

He resisted an urge to chuckle. "How can you?"

"Neo, right now we are inside a program. We're sitting on a beach, feeling the wind in our hair and the sand on our feet. It feels wonderful; we're satiated, happy, comfortable. It's beautiful. But Neo, this isn't real. In a while, we're going to go back to the fake cabin, have a fake dinner, and sleep in a fake bed." 

She moved closer to his face, their noses almost touching.

"But I won't kiss you here, Neo. Because they couldn't duplicate what it actually feels like when my lips touch yours. Remember how they used to say that the feeling of love was nothing more than a chemical reaction similar to the one produced by eating chocolate?"

Neo smiled, remembering.

"Well, it's not. Not even close. We've proven that. And that is why I still believe. If there wasn't God, there wouldn't be a difference."

Neo could feel her breath on his lips, the heat radiating from her body...it reminded him of their first meeting in the Matrix. At the club, her mouth just brushing his ear, her voice replacing the cacophony of the club. She had been so far away then, so alien. But he had trusted her, believed her. Wanted her. He wondered if anything she was saying now could possibly be true.

"I don't know if I agree with you, Trinity," he confessed. "I mean, _look at us_; where we are, what happened to the human race..."

"You don't have to agree with me, Neo," she said, straightening her self back up to a sitting position. "I don't expect you to. But everything about our world, as you're beginning to find out, has everything to do with faith. Not necessarily faith in a god, but faith in ourselves, faith in the human race."

She placed her hands on his face and searched his eyes with her own. "Do you believe now, Neo, that you are the one?"

He didn't have to hesitate any more. "Yes."

"Then I believe... in _you_."

Trinity laughed, nearly spitting out her hot chocolate. "No shit, Neo. You've got to be kidding me."

"Nope," he smiled, "not at all."

"I don't believe it."

Neo smiled shyly and began to pick at the rug.

"You have got to tell me about this," Trinity urged, leaning forward and cuddling her pillow.

"I don't see what's so funny," Neo began.

"You. An actor. My God. Did you wear the little tights?"

"No little tights Trin. We did it out of period."

"What does that mean?"

"Instead of doing Shakespeare to match the time period in which it was written, we, well, moved it to another time. Basically changed the setting."

"Shit. I haven't heard Shakespeare in years. I actually took a class. How did that one go? 'What light from yonder window breaks...'"

"Oh no. Not that one."

"Don't you remember watching that God-awful version in high school where the teachers fast-forwarded it through the sex scenes?"

Neo chuckled. "Yeah."

"You know," he added after a moment of staring into the fire, "I played Romeo in high school."

"No way. No way." Her eyes sparkled as he continued.

"Yeah, I did. I hated it. I mean, I really hated it. I remember this so vividly...the auditions. I had to be Romeo, tragic lover of Juliet."

"Well you got the lead, isn't that good?"

"What's so special about Romeo? The guy was a dumbass, if you ask me. I would have rather been Mercutio. Drunken sooth-sayer meets death in the form of a blade..."

"You should be happy; they cast you in the spotlight."

Neo stared at the fire. "Sometimes it's the minor characters who hold the most importance."

"I took it too seriously," he continued after a pause.

"There's nothing wrong with that."

Neo turned and searched her face for acceptance before continuing. "Acting was a way to escape. To get lost in a time, a language so different from your own. Leave the human race behind. How ironic that is. And so there I was, up there on stage, pancake-makeuped, baring my soul as Othello, raising hell as Hamlet... "

"Were you good?"

"Very."

"Why'd you stop?" asked Trinity, setting down her hot chocolate and moving closer to Neo.

"Hurt too damn much. I lived those words, Trin. I lived those souls. From villains to heroes. Then in college I broke. Just broke apart. Couldn't do it anymore. Through a fit on stage one night at practice 'cause fucking bitch who played Viola couldn't get her lines right for the fifth time that evening. Eventually profs didn't want me in their shows. 'Too emotional; too wrapped up in character' they said. Fuck it."

"And so you changed your major?"

"Yeah. Computers were so predictable. No emotions there. Just look at us now."

"Thomas Anderson, the actor."

"I don't have to act anymore."

They sat in silence for a while, listening to the crackle of the fire and sighing of the wind. Trinity waited for his face to soften, those lines of anguish and defeat to fade into the night, before joining him on the rug.

Tenderly she gathered him into her arms. "All the world's a stage," she whispered.

Neo stared into the fire. "And all the men and women merely players."

How true, he thought. How true.

"So if we sleep here, are we sleeping there?"

Trinity nodded, her mouth full of toothpaste.

Neo leaned in the doorway, captivated.

She gave her teeth another once-over, and spat a generous helping of mint-flavored Colgate into the sink. "God," she said as the bluish foam washed away with the tapwater. "That feels great. It's so...normal. I feel like I have clean teeth!"

Neo couldn't help but smile; his ass-kicking leather-clad Trinity was excited about toothpaste. He suddenly understand what she meant by unbreakable. They were simply too tough.

"Guess that gritty shit we've got doesn't do it for you, huh?" he asked, amused.

"God, no. Not even close. And you know what I could really use, Neo? A bath. A deep, hot bath. With bubbles. Shit, I haven't had a bath in weeks."

"We don't have a bathtub on the Neb."

"A bath here. I scrubbed down this morning, remember?"

"What do you think that sponge thing is made of?"

"Who knows? You up for a bath?"

She turned the knobs by the tub, sat down on the edge, and looked at him expectantly.

Neo slunk back into the doorway. "You know, Trin, I think you should probably take a bath by yourself..."

"That wasn't what I was implying," she replied nonchalantly. "You're more than welcome to go before me."

"Yeah, that sounds great," he admitted.

Trinity left him in privacy to bathe. He noticed that he had a toothbrush sitting on the counter and decided to make use of it. She was right; it was an awesome feeling compared to the shit on board the Neb. He stripped down and examined himself in the mirror; he was more muscular and plugless, of course, than he was in real life. He inhaled and flexed his muscles, impressed with himself. _Guess all the training does pay off,_ he thought. _Mental muscle._

He spied the toilet and resisted the urge to go; he could actually hear himself asking Trinity, "so, if we piss here, do we piss there?" and decided he'd better just scrap the whole idea. He'd gone on the Neb, anyway.

Neo lowered himself gingerly into the tub, marveling at the feel of hot water on skin. He reminded himself that there really was no tub, but he decided to follow Trinity's advice and give himself a nice, mental rest. Before long he was fast asleep.

A soft rap on the door brought him back to reality.

"Neo?" asked Trinity through the door. "You okay?"

"Mmmm...yeah...just fell asleep for a sec. I'll be right out."

Neo appeared in the doorway, towel wrapped around his waist, hair going every direction. Trinity smiled and put down her book; he was so damned cute.

"Coming to bed?" she asked softly as he staggered into the room.

"God, I'm so tired."

"I guess Morpheus had a point, huh?"

"Yeah, I guess," he admitted reluctantly. "I'm glad I'm here with you," he added, shyly.

"Me too. I'm going to take a bath, okay? There's some shorts for you in the dresser." She kissed him on the forehead and headed for the door.

"Don't be too long, " he called after her.

She smiled back at him, closed the door, and drew herself a bath.

Trinity laid on her back under the down quilt with Neo curled tightly to her side. He was asleep before she even finished her bath; she found him half-sprawled out on top of the plush bed. She had quickly toweled off her short hair, dressed in a conservative cotton pajamas, and set about the task of getting Neo under the covers without waking him. The room had begun to get chilly; Neo's smooth bare chest was covered with goosebumps. She turned off the lights and began to half lift him, half pull him to the head of the bed. She finally got him to a position where she could pull the comforter and flannel sheets down far enough so that she could weasel him under. "There is no spoon my ass," she said to herself as she felt her muscles strain against a weight that technically wasn't even there. 

Her goal accomplished, Trinity climbed under the covers and stretched herself out, her toes barely touching the footboard. Almost instinctively Neo rolled over and nudged himself up close to her. It was a comforting feeling, she decided, after a few moments of trying to place her emotions. Part of her desperately wanted to wake him and fuck him senseless (damn hormones), but the other part (damn brain) remembered their pact to not get physical while in the Matrix or the construct. Must be real, must be real. _Just keep it going in your head, Trinity. Must be real. Must be real. Must be real.._

Eventually the May wind, Neo's steady breathing, and her mantra of reality lulled her to sleep in minutes. In her dream, she was back on her beach, letting the hem of her skirt dance with the waves.

Morpheus came into the core to check on Tank. "How is Trinity?" he asked, his voice tired. Tank pointed to her vitals by the loading platform. Morpheus nodded. They were sleeping. "I'm gonna hate to have to wake them up," he said quietly.

Tank waited for the command to pull them out, but it never came. The pair sat in silence and watched them for several hours before asking Tank to bring them back.

"Wake up, Neo."

"Huh?" Neo blinked, confused. "Trinity? Where are we?"

"Back on the ship. Hold on, I'll unplug you."

Neo relaxed as he felt the long, metal data plug slip out of his head. "God, that's gross," he mumbled.

"You'll get used to it."

"Don't think so," replied Neo, running his hand over his shaved head. "What happened to the construct?"

"Morpheus had to pull us out. We've got to go in."

"Shit, not the Matrix. Can't go back there yet."

Trinity touched his pale cheek, her fingers lingering by his lips. "We're not going in the Matrix, Neo." Her lips twitched with happy anticipation. 

"We're going to Zion."

Trinity and Neo clung to the back of the cockpit, watching Morpheus maneuver the ship through countless tunnels and byways. The Neb was not completely repaired, but now flyable. Their lingering presence began to bother him. He had too much on his mind, between the condition of the ship and the loss of most of his crew.

"Want to drive, Trinity?" he asked.

"Hell yeah," she replied, taking the co-pilot's seat and switching on various instruments.

"I didn't know you could drive this thing, Trin," said Neo. 

Trinity was too focused on taking over for the captain to notice. "She's an excellent captain," commented Morpheus as he joined Neo near the cockpit entrance. "Have a seat. Let her take you for a ride." He smiled at Neo cryptically, then quietly left the cockpit.

Neo sat in Morpheus' chair next to Trinity, watching the wondrous world of dark passageways fly by him. Trinity clutched the wheel with one hand while the other was hard at work pushing buttons and flipping switches. Her eyes never left the vast maze ahead of her.

"Hey," murmured Neo, "you're pretty good."

"Damn straight," she replied as she maneuvered around a particularly large obstruction. "It's not a program, you know."

"What?"

"I actually learned how to fly this thing. No uploading here."

"You fly like I used to drive."

A hint of a smile played on her lips. "If I remember correctly," she said without averting her eyes from their task, "you drove like shit. Fast, and like shit."

"Yeah, but that was programmed."

"The car was programmed. Your brain told it how fast to go."

"Hey, I never got into any accidents."

"Ever wonder why?"

Neo furrowed his eyebrows. "No, I never did. Why?"

Trinity gazed ahead, pretending to concentrate on flying.

"Trin, what's up? You know something I don't?"

She snorted a soft laugh. "No, Neo, it's nothing."

"Trinity..."

For the first time during their conversation, she looked at him, smiled, and popped the knuckles on her free hand. "I'm a hacker, dear," she said sweetly. "That's my secret. Morpheus found you. The crew watched you. I kept you safe."

Irritation crept into Neo's voice. "I was being watched?"

"Not watched. Monitored."

"What's the difference? You mean you saw everything? I went to work, you saw? I ate dinner, you watched? So, spy, did you get to see me take a piss?"

"Neo," she said, nonplussed, returning her attention back to the ship, "we weren't invading your privacy. You were still all alone there in your little jelly hole..."

"Trinity, you were watching my _thoughts._ That's sick."

"Cypher used to tease me," she said uneasily, not knowing if Neo was seriously angry or just being difficult.

"Why?" he asked, easing up a bit. She was talking, this was good.

"I used to not sleep for hours...just watching you. Sonofabitch was jealous."

Her knuckles began to whiten from her tight grip.

"Jealous of what?"

"Neo, you know the answer to that question. Please don't think that I was invading your privacy. I just wanted..." She swallowed, unused to the raw emotions that caused her throat to close up. "I just wanted to be close to you. For a long time watching was the only way I could."

All irritation disappeared from his voice. "You protected me."

"As much as I could. Morpheus would have had a fucking fit if he knew I was changing shit in the Matrix without his permission."

"I thought we couldn't change the Matrix."

"It's not a question of can, Neo. It's a question of how long you'll live after you do. You see, I can't do what you do. You just _think_ and it happens; it stays the way you want it to be. I hack the old-fashioned way."

"And they never found out."

"Oh, yeah, they found out. Almost got nailed a few times by our mutual friend Smith. Morpheus found out too, but by that time we were working on getting you out."

"What did you do?"

"Oh, just little things. Barely detectable things. Yellow lights stayed yellow longer; other vehicles would speed up or slow down just a bit. Enough to compensate for your shitty driving."

"God. How long were you doing this?"

"A few months. It became a game after a bit. I'd be sleeping, and Tank would knock on my door, all excited, and whisper 'he's in the car!'"

Neo smiled as he watched Trinity relax. Talking's going to be difficult with her, he thought as she skillfully wove her way through the tunnels. He held onto the sides of the chair as Trinity maneuvered the Nebachanezzer through a particularly tight passage. What a woman.

"Trin," he asked after a few moments pause, "are we there yet?"

Morpheus reentered the cockpit about two hours later, fresh from a simulated thermal soak. He'd been out of the Matrix long enough where he no longer made the distinction between body and mind - the mental rest rejuvenated him more than a real full night's sleep.

"How are we doing, Trinity?" he asked gently.

"Fine," she replied, preparing to the controls back to her captain. "We're about three hours out."

"Where is Zion, exactly?" asked Neo.

"Near what's left of the core. It's lost a considerable amount of heat in the last thousand years. Zion was originally built under Canada's Northern Territories, but it kept growing in, toward the heat. There's really nothing left of the original Zion."

Morpheus paused to adjust himself into the pilot's chair. 

"There are several entrances, Neo. We're heading to one that's directly underneath the Atlantic. Well, the Atlantic glaciers, at least. Water froze up years ago. The machines are still sensitive to the moisture; most of them avoid the area completely. Sentinels can't get through security. When it comes to pinpointing exact location, it couldn't be easier. It's the damned center of the Earth."

"Oh," said Neo stupidly. There was so much he still needed to know but asking questions was a cruel reminder of his ignorance of the real world.

Trinity sensed his frustration and pledged that she'd do a better job keeping Neo informed about so many of the little things he had yet to learn.

"We have to leave now," said Trinity gently, taking Neo by the arm. Before he could ask her why, she explained, "Morpheus alone can enter Zion. We are simply not allowed to know how to get there or how to get in. Safety reasons."

Neo smiled at her gently and let her guide him out of the pilot's cabin. The hatch door was their next priority.

It had been shut for almost three years.

"I'm Flare," said the shorter woman. "I'll show you to your rooms."

"This is the detox area," Trinity explained to Neo as they walked through a maze of corridors. "We need to be checked for any type of infections or bugs that could jeopardize the safety of Zion."

"How long will we be here?" he asked Trinity quietly, taking in his surroundings. Their drab, dirty clothing looked especially dingy against the sterile white walls.

"We most likely will stay here for the time being. We'll get detoxed, then sent back to our bunks to rest."

"Rest?"

"Neo," she whispered, "do you realize what we've just been through?"

Flare stopped abruptly in the pristine hallway. "Here's your room," she said to Trinity. "Morpheus and Tank are two doors over. Enjoy your detoxification."

"Your room," she began, addressing Neo with a smile, "is..."

"He's with me," Trinity interrupted with quiet authority. As Flare's mouth began to open in protest, the ranking officer allowed a tiny smile to play across her lips before guiding Neo through the door. "Thank you," she said gently as she closed the door on a still-gaping Flare.

The door shut quietly, not like the loud metal clang of the doors aboard the Neb. As soon as the lock clicked home Neo began to chuckle.

"You didn't have to be such a bitch to her, Trin."

"Well," she said with a wicked grin, "did you want to be detoxed all by yourself?"

"It doesn't sound like much fun, actually."

"Actually," she began, pressing him toward the door, "I think you're completely underestimating this experience."

He thumped against the door, barely realizing that she had trapped him. 

"I think," she continued, "that you might actually enjoy it." 

Her hands found his, her own callused fingers slipping between Neo's smooth ones. "I know I'm going to like it," she whispered, her mouth just inches from his own. 

"God, Trinity," he breathed as her mouth found his for their first not-so-chaste kiss. Neo nearly collapsed against the solid door as Trinity pressed her body into his, her full, warm lips moving gently against his own. 

He struggled for control. He had never felt anything remotely similar to this before. True, he had intercourse a few times in the Matrix, but nevertheless it was nothing compared to what he was feeling now. A simple kiss, and his pulse was racing out of control. Trinity unlocked her hands from his and moved them up the fabric of his shirt, then grasped his face as she pulled him in deeper. He parted his lips and allowed her to explore his mouth. He moaned then, as their tongues met for the first time, a deep, sobbing sound that was muffled by her mouth.

She drew back, perplexed. 

"You okay?" she asked, licking her lips.

"God, yes, Trinity." But before he could pull her in for another kiss, a sharp rapping came from the other side of the door. Neo jumped with surprise. "Calm down there, tiger," Trinity whispered with a smile before gently moving Neo aside to open the door.

"Yes?" Her voice had resumed its don't-give-me-shit tone.

Neo took a deep breath and allowed Trinity to handle the interruption. He glanced around the room, noting the elements of simple living that he never expected to see again. In the far corner of the room was their bunk, a double bed built right into the wall, like a little cave. There was a nightstand, a dresser, and doors to what he figured was a closet. He moved to the bed and sat on it, marveling in its comfort. Even more interesting was the comforter. It was actually a comforter, patchworked but nonetheless a newer cloth, dyed a deep indigo. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on its texture, willing his erection away. "Plenty of time for that," he muttered to himself as he heard Trinity shut the door. 

"We've got fifteen minutes to get to detox. We'd better get going."

"Back to business, huh?" he smirked. 

Trinity eyed him coolly and opened her mouth to reply, but didn't. 

"Trin?" Neo asked as she picked up her bags. "What is it?"

"Nothing. Let's go."

"Trinity." He grabbed her arm, turning her toward him. "What is it?"

She hesitated. "We're...together... now, right?"

"Oh, Trinity," he breathed, drawing her close, "yes. God, yes. I can't do this without you."

She was silent.

"Don't close up on me, Trin. I need you. We need to learn how to talk."

"Yeah," she whispered. "Guess that's hard for me."

"It's okay. I'm not great at it either."

She nodded.

"What was going on out there, anyway."

She looked up to meet his gaze. "I gave the girl hell about detox."

"Why?" he asked, smoothing her hair.

"Well, let's just say we'll be going through it together."

"Why Trinity," Neo asked, surprised, "are you jealous?"

"No," she smiled, "not jealous. Just a bit possessive."

"Possessive? No, you're kiddin' me."

"Really, Neo, you'll see why. Detox, well, is pretty exposing. And, as I was telling you, it's not a bad experience at all. But it's a bit uncomfortable to go alone. Speaking of, we'd better go." She hoisted her bags up on her shoulder and turned to open the door. 

"Exposing?" called Neo, behind her.

She turned, smiled, and continued down the hallway.

They walked in silence down the clean, white hallway until they came to the detoxification chambers. Trinity scanned the patient board to find their names. "Good deal," she said. "We're in forty-six"

"Did your efforts pay off?"

"Definitely."

Neo was expecting a medical examination room, but instead he was surprised to see a decent-sized room that looked almost comfortable. A large, steamy pool, cloistered by gauzy curtains, hid in the back corner of the room. Two small wall sconces light the room with a delicate, rosy light. "This is detox?" he asked, confused.

"Yeah. C'mon in."

"I haven't seen anything like this in the real world. It actually looks comfortable."

"You won't find this stuff on any ship, Neo. Zion has had a long time to build itself into what it is today. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised."

She shut the door and gestured to two flat tables covered with plush, natural-looking towels. "Take off your clothes, and lay down."

Neo raised his eyebrows. "In front of you?"

She let out a light snort. "Yeah, in front of me. You can leave your undergarments on."

"What are they going to do?" he asked as he pulled his ratty shirt over his head.

"Plug us in, clean us up."

"Plugs?" he asked, concerned.

"Yeah. They'll run a program on us just to make sure we're healthy and bug-free."

"How long does that take?"

"Just a few minutes. I'm here with you, they won't marvel over you too long."

"Thanks," he said sarcastically.

Trinity took off her clothes and sat on the table next to Neo. He tried not to look at her, lest he be aroused in front of a bunch of doctors. He was painfully aware of the scars left from his plugs, round, pink circles burned against the rest of his pale flesh. He glanced at Trinity; hers were faded, barely visible. Only the plug in the back of her neck remained. The one in her arm, he could tell, was only recently removed. 

He fingered his own arm plug, embarrassed, revolted by it. 

"They'll probably take that one out," she murmured as if she could understand his thoughts. "You don't need it anymore."

"How long have you been out, Trin?" he asked, curling himself up into a less revealing position. 

"Eight or nine years. I was twenty, almost done with college. I was late, too."

"Shit, they really did wait a long time for me."  
"You were hard to find."

"So I've heard."

A soft knock at the door interrupted them; a tall blonde woman slid gently in. "I'm Circuit," she introduced herself. "Neo, Trinity."

Neo glanced at Trinity, who was already positioning her head near the end of the table. "Lay down," she mouthed. Taking another glance at the beautiful doctor, Neo could see why Trinity wanted to be detoxed by his side. 

"What program, please?" the blonde asked Neo.

"I don't know..." he stumbled, looking to Trinity for help.

"Cafe," said Trinity.

He watched Trinity as the doctor pulled the spike from under the table and inserted it into the back of Trinity's head. She didn't even flinch. He studied her body as he prepared to be plugged in; her slender frame, pale skin covered by a dingy gray, torn tank top and a raggedy pair of underwear. She was gorgeous.

"Are you ready, Neo?" asked the doctor. Without waiting for a response, Neo felt the cold piece of metal scream through his brain, and then heard the bustle and commotion of a diner. 

He opened his eyes to find himself sitting in a mom-and-pop cafe, across the table from Trinity.

"Seems almost normal, doesn't it," she asked, sipping a large latte. 

"Yeah. You look nice."

"As always, right?" she blushed.

"No, really. Stand up, turn around"

"Neo, come on."

"None of these people are real, and you know it. C'mon, Trin," he pleaded.

She slowly rose from her seat, spread her arms out, and turned in a slow circle. Neo watched in appreciation. Her dark denim jeans covered most of her traditional Matrix boots. A sharp black leather jacket covered a small white v-neck shirt that accentuated what he could see of her small breasts. Her hair fell in soft waves round her chin and...

"Trin," he asked, surprised, "are you wearing lipstick?"

"You noticed," she said proudly as she re-took her seat. "Do you like it?"

"I love this RSI thing," Neo marveled. "Did you notice I left my hair short for you?"

"Of course. I like it that way."

"Oh, it will get to you someday," he chuckled.

"I don't think I'll ever get sick of looking at you," she said, raising her eyebrow.

"Oh, now don't get me started," he joked, grabbing her free hand across the table.

"Do you know how ridiculous we're acting?" she asked, smiling.

"No, not really. I don't give a shit about it in here. Out there, either. God, Trinity, I'm just happy. You know, there was a time, just a short while ago, where I thought that I could never be happy out of the Matrix. I wondered if happiness was simply a programmed feeling. Bullshit. I don't think they _could_ program what I'm feeling."

"Ah, the blind man sees," she replied with an arch of her eyebrow.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing, Neo. I agree with you. I'm, well, simply happy."

She took a long swallow of latte and stared at him under her thick lashes.

"So what's it take to get a cup of coffee in this place?" he asked, half-joking.

"Coffee," she said to no one in particular, and in less than a few seconds a steaming cup of black coffee materialized in front of Neo.

"Damn, you're good," he mumbled, gingerly feeling the cup, still in awe about the sheer technology of the thing. And as Trinity began to explain what Zion was like, he let his mind wander, lost in the richness of a flavor that, in reality, wasn't even there.

Neo was so lost in the program that when Trinity disappeared he had a moment of panic. But before his mind could react he too was jolted back to the real world and endured another sickening unplugging. It reminded him of those nature shows where they pulled burrowing worms out of someone's skin. His gaze immediately turned to Trinity, whose eyes were still closed.

"I'm here, Neo," she whispered, a faint smile on her lips.

"The both of you seem clean," said Circuit as she removed her gloves, "and all your organs are working properly."

Neo suppressed a laugh. An organ-checker.

"Thanks," said Trinity, sitting up. "When's muscle therapy?" she asked, stretching her arms up over her head. 

Neo quickly averted his eyes.

"Oh, Morpheus told me that you two would be able to do your own massage back at your room. I've arranged for you to do the rest of your detox there. Put your robes on, and go back to your room."

Neo's eyebrows shot up.

"Thanks, Circuit," Trinity said genuinely as the doctor left.

Trinity hopped down from her table and retrieved their robes. She slipped one on, and handed one to Neo. "That wasn't that enjoyable," he whispered to her as they walked hand-in-hand down the hallway. 

"We didn't get bathed," she replied with a half-grin. 

"I was kinda looking forward to the massage."

A smile played on her lips. "Oh, you'll get one," she said as she opened their door.

She directed him immediately to the bathroom, both of the anxious to relax and get clean. Trinity was secretly pleased, realizing that most of the Zion officials were going out of their way to make them comfortable. The bathroom was proof. Zion's Fifth Detox Unit was renowned for its thermal spas, deep steamy pockets of mineral water lay just beneath the compound. Humans took advantage of these gems, of course, drawing the heated waters to individual bathing pools inside for public use. Most thermal spas were able to sustain abundant plant life, and with a new form of fusion they were able to create that simulated sunlight, the spas proved to be a veritable farm for most edible food. Of course, many of the growing areas were split off from public bathing areas, but no thermal spa was absent of some sort of greenery.

Theirs was no different. The spacious room was painted a pale sage green. A large, clear pool sat on one side of the room, steam billowing from its waters. Exotic orchids grew in ancient-looking terracotta pots around the far side of the pool. There was no artificial sunlight here, only dozens of candle sconces lining the walls surrounding the pool, making it gleam invitingly. It was enclosed completely and separated from the other area of the bathroom by gauzy curtains similar to those in the detox area.

Although the other area of the bathroom followed suit with the relaxing atmosphere of the thermal spa, it still resembled a traditional human bathroom, complete with a sink, toilet, and separate shower. Trinity closed her eyes and inhaled the sweet, clean fragrance. 

"Makes you realize what you've been missing, huh?" she asked Neo, who was still dumbfounded at its stark contrast to their ship's lavatory.

"Mmm. I'm gonna remember the warmth of it the most. So freaking cold on the Neb. Been cold since I got here."

"Then let's get in the tub," she suggested, guiding Neo toward the thermal spa.

"I'll get in first," Neo offered, trying to find a way around the awkwardness. "Don't look."

Trinity smiled, and turned around.

Neo let the robe drop to the floor, wriggled out of his underwear and quickly slid himself into the pool of steaming water. It was the most incredible thing he'd ever felt; he unconsciously moaned at the sensation.

"Water nice?" Trinity asked, turning around to make sure he was in.

"God, it's great."

"Your turn. Eyes shut."

Neo obeyed, and Trinity gingerly stepped into the pool, positioning herself next to Neo but not touching him. She was relieved to see that the water came up to her collarbones; although she trusted Neo completely, it was still a strange situation. Wet skin-on-skin contact would be enough to send both of them over the edge right now, and she knew it.

So did Neo. 

But it wasn't long before they pushed their nakedness to the back of their minds and concentrated on the job at hand. Fuck it, she thought. She'd lived on the Neb for eight years now and had seen every one of her shipmates naked on more than one occasion. Yeah, she reminded herself, but they were friends. Shipmates. Nothing more. It didn't matter, and it shouldn't matter now. 

"I'm going to bathe you," she said matter-of-factly after a half-hour of silent and comfortable relaxation, and moved past Neo, guiding him in front of her as she stood and repositioned herself on a shallow edge of the pool. The steamy swirls of water no longer hid her breasts, but she no longer felt painfully uncomfortable. 

"I can bathe myself," Neo muttered without conviction. 

"Wouldn't you rather let me do it?" she whispered, picking up a washtowel.

"Yeah, I guess so," he replied sleepily.

Trinity smiled and soaped up the cloth, feeling more and more comfortable. She guided Neo gently back to rest between her knees before she began to wash his arms, back, and chest. She slowly rubbed his skin clean, all the while admiring the features she'd never realized before: his hairless chest, his jutting collarbone, his soft, delicate features. She washed his entire top half thoroughly, being extra gentle around his remaining plugs and even washing his short hair. She ran her hand over it, delighted with its delightfully fuzzy texture. He would have been happy to know that she wasn't a bit phased by the plug in his head.

Neo's eyes closed and posture slumped two minutes into her task, and when she was finished she was positive that he was sound asleep. He has a right to be, she reminded herself. Trying to ignore the blatant desire that was beginning to burn inside her, she folded herself over him, her small breasts resting on his wet back, arms wrapping around his chest. Her head fit snugly between his shoulder blades and head plug.

She was almost embarrassed at her forward behavior earlier, but the need to be physically close with Neo had become a desire she no longer wanted to control. She had felt him grow hard against her as she pressed him against the door for their first lusty kiss; it secretly thrilled her that she was the cause of his erection. 

She was actually worried at first whether or not he'd be attracted to her. The night they met for the first time she had even asked Tank about her choice of clothing.

"Hmm, dahling," he teased, "how 'bout some black leather?"

"Oh, shut up, Tank," she fumed. "Can't you give me some good advice here?"

"Okay, I see you're serious. Go strapless. Let him see those shoulders of yours."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You're going to a club, remember? Go shake your stuff!"

Well, she certainly wasn't going to shake anything there, save maybe Neo's hand. She watched him from afar; he looked so out of place, so lonely. _Like me,_ she thought absently. She came up to him slowly, deliberately, hands behind her back.

The meeting went smoothly, but she was convinced that Neo was more impressed with her delinquent reputation than with her appearance. _Shit_, she thought, _I'm in frickin' leather and I didn't get so much as a once-over._ Tank only laughed at her insecurity, leaving her to face the rest of the night confused and frustrated.

Later, after they'd pulled him, her feelings for him blossomed. Dozer began to get annoyed with her watching him work, and Morpheus begged her to get some sleep. She answered them with a raise of her eyebrow, her head held high. They knew better than to command her elsewhere. 

She was there at his side each time he came to.

"I know you," he said hoarsely to her one night after a particularly violent series of nightmares jolted him awake. 

"I'm Trinity," she said with a smile, gently caressing his cheek.

"I thought I was dead. Thought you were angel," he whispered, shutting his eyes.

She smiled to herself.

"Please stay with me," he managed to whisper moments later. "I don't want to be alone anymore."

"I'll be here," she affirmed him. 

Several weeks later they managed to move him to his own cabin, but after spending a night incoherent and screaming for her, Morpheus decided that it would be best for her to stay watch over him while he slept.

So she did, back aching against the cold steel, butt tingling from lack of blood. When he'd wake up, confused and delirious, she would simply take his hand in hers and lay him back down and coax him back to sleep.

They never talked.

But her love for him blossomed nonetheless.

And the crew never teased her, never asked about her midnight vigils. In fact, they were surprised to see her one morning at breakfast. She sat down without a word, ate her synthetic protein glop and go about her duties.

It was what had happened the night before that made her decide to leave Neo's side.

Deep in sleep, Neo had called her name. He'd done it before during his fevers, but this time it was different. He'd _moaned_ it. She was almost on the brink of sleep, her forehead barely touching her folded arms when she heard the whisper of his voice break the stillness. At first she thought she'd imagined it, but there it was again. She opened her eyes wide, straining them against the darkness of the room. He'd said her name in a way that sent a jolt of electrical current down her spine. 

He was dreaming about her.

Instantly uncomfortable, she fled his room and went to her own cabin, locking herself in. 

She sat on the bed, shaking.

She wanted him to like her, to love her even, but she knew how these things went. Each crew member, in fact, had gone through something similar with other new members. Like Switch, for instance. Switch bonded with Apoc upon her unplugging, and then with Mouse when they found him. Mouse was Switch's baby; she spent hours just talking to him while he was being reconstructed. Everyone had their own theories about who's body Mouse modeled the woman in red after. Tank had befriended Trinity after her unplugging; they were now best friends. 

But had she crossed the line with Neo?

She wasn't in love with him then, just a feeling she couldn't explain, but couldn't ignore... 

The night Neo moaned her name from deep within sleep, the stoic Trinity began to weep as she realized she would have to let Neo do it on his own, if things were to be as the Oracle predicted. It was one of the hardest decisions of her life. 

Soon after Neo was up and able to function around the ship, however, she grew more confident that Neo may actually be noticing her. She'd catch the last seconds of stolen glances...unseized moments of conversation...

It was silent flirtation at it's best. 

And then there was that night before Neo went to see the Oracle. After dinner she had returned to her cabin, exhausted. She'd barely closed her eyes before she fell into a restless sleep. A slight tap on her door, barely audible, roused her. Curious, she went to the door, hoping Cypher wasn't hanging around like he had been doing lately. Instead it was Neo. 

"How long have you been out here?" she asked, her voice gravely.

He paused, and opted to tell the truth. "About an hour."

"What time is it?"

"It's late."

She wordlessly invited him in; they sat on her bunk.

"This is going to sound really strange," he fumbled, his voice soft as he tried to find the right words, "but I've got to tell you something. I just...can't keep it in anymore."

She searched his eyes, wondering what he was trying to say, hoping...

"I have these feelings...about, well..."

He tried again.

"Trinity...I think about you..."

His eyebrows furrowed in concentration.

Then he abandoned the idea of trying to tell her all together.

The next thing she realized was that he was apprehensively leaning in closer to kiss her. He reached up to touch her face, to pull her in, when it happened.

The shrill alarm signal jolted their eyes open.

"Oh, shit," said Trinity, now on full-alert mode. "We've got to get to the deck."

Never had sentinels come at a less appropriate time.

And from that day until the standoff with the agents, Trinity had kept her feelings in check. Too much was at stake, too many emotions on the line. She decided that she'd let Neo make the next move too, just to make sure that what happened the night the sentinels attacked wasn't a momentary physical weakness. 

That was her intent, anyway. 

There were times that she wanted to tell him...but in the car on the way to the Oracle wasn't the right time or place. The subway wasn't ideal, either. And when the agents succeeded in killing him, she thought for a moment that she'd missed her chance, that he was gone.

But that couldn't be true. He couldn't be gone. 

Trinity was so lost in her reverie that she barely felt Neo's bicep twitch under her arms, and the gentle pressure of his hand rest against her thigh. Her eyes suddenly snapped open. 

"You awake, Trinity?" he asked softly.

"Mmm. Yeah, half-in, half-out."

"Sorry I fell asleep."

"I was half there myself. Was thinking."

"'Bout what?"

She paused before answering, not certain whether or not she wanted to discuss those moments of panic. 

"Neo," she said after awhile, holding him from behind and mumbling into his hair, "did you hear me? After you were shot?"

"Yes. You told me that you loved me. And I knew then that I was the one."

"I should have told you sooner."

"Nah," he said with a light laugh, "I think you chose an appropriate time. I understand why you waited," he added. "I don't know how I would have reacted. I can't believe I didn't understand who the Oracle was talking about."

"What do you mean?"

"She said I was cute," he said, blushing, "and then she said 'I can she why she likes you.'"

"What did you say?"

"I said 'who?'"

"Oh, come on, Neo."

"Well you stopped staying with me, and then after that night when I followed you back to your cabin from dinner...and then when we went into the Matrix and you barely said three words to me..."

"We had a job to do..."

"Well, I still didn't think I had a chance."

"You're such a dolt," she teased, cautiously sliding out from behind him. Keeping herself as much of herself submerged as possible, she tried to maneuver herself over to the bench opposite Neo, but he grabbed her arm, stopping her. Without speaking he managed to situate her on his lap, so they were facing each other. She let him guide her without hesitation, glad that he was finally taking the initiative. She wrapped her legs around his back, her eyes never leaving his.

"I'm really nervous," he managed to whisper as he studied her face. Her hair was damp and was beginning to curl around her face, her cheeks flushed from the heat. "Me too," she replied. She _was_ nervous, a feeling she'd rarely felt since her unplugging. She'd felt terrified, yes, but never really nervous. Not even with the Oracle. But this was different. Very, very different. Her stomach was in knots, her mind was on emotional overload, and her heart felt like it was about to burst. But stronger than the butterflies was an intense desire to become one with Neo, to finally show him how much she loved him.

"Kiss me," she managed to whisper, much to Neo's delight. He took his time. Slowly, hesitatingly, they closed the distance between their mouths, lips meeting together for a soft kiss.

Neo took her face in his hands, trying to explore her mouth without bringing her any closer. His senses were completely overloaded as it was, and he was beginning to wonder if he could really handle this like a man should. Oh, he wanted her, all of her, but the years of celibacy, the complete lack of physical and mental intimacy, left him terrified. _Okay,_ he said to himself, _I've got a beautiful woman nearly sitting on my lap. Think about it, you dolt. She's not going to laugh at you. You're in love with her, remember?_ Yet as he felt her tongue slide over his lips and her breathing become more ragged he couldn't suppress his fear. Not only was he ashamed about his lack of sexual experience, he was certain he was going to come right there in the pool just from kissing her. He was still physically weak; would he even be able to keep himself going long enough? And then the thought that stung the most began to hammer in his mind: did she love him simply because the Oracle told her that she would?

__

Fuck you, he told the voice inside his head. _That's bullshit. Look at her. She wants you, man. She loves you. Don't get yourself going about shit that isn't true. _He began to kiss her neck, drawing her closer to him and reveling in the taste of her skin. Trinity moaned, causing his cock to twitch involuntarily. _There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of, Neo, _he told himself. _Just look at her. This isn't just you. You're together now; you're one, together._ And with that the fear subsided, leaving him euphoric and profoundly horny.

Trinity closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of Neo's lips on her neck. It was exquisite. _What the hell am I supposed to do now?_ she wondered. She sensed Neo's uneasiness. He looked so vulnerable, thin and pale, but she'd never seen him so alive. _Touch him,_ the voice answered. Slowly she removed her hands from behind his neck and began to drag her fingertips down his chest. She heard him groan deep in his throat as she moved her hands to his chest, delicately circling his flat nipples. "Feels good," he whispered, ending his quest with her throat.

She moved her hands further down his chest, under the water, keeping eye contact with him the entire time. "May I?" she whispered as her hands drew closer to his groin.

Neo was lost for words. She had adjusted him so that she could sit comfortably on his lap, facing him, wrapping her legs behind his back. The water barely covered her breasts, and he was too fascinated to speak. "Beautiful," was the only thing he could manage to croak out.

She kissed him gently before continuing her journey downward; Neo closed his eyes and waited for contact, silently begging her to end the torture. "Oh, God, I can't," he stammered, suddenly positive that he was gonna lose it right there. Not that he didn't want to lose it, but his inner voice was nagging at him again. _Bed,_ it said. _Get up and get her to the bed._

Roger that, he told the voice. Let the games begin.

Trinity furrowed her eyebrows, suddenly worried that she'd crossed a line that he didn't want to cross.

"It's okay," he breathed, kissing her again. "We just gotta get to the bed."

She smiled, filling him with happiness.

"I agree," she whispered back between kisses.

They got out of the spa slowly, marveling at each other's bodies and getting lost in kisses and caresses. He eventually led her back into the bedroom, her wet hand wrapped in his own.

Time slipped away as they made love for the first time, lost in the whisper of tangled sheets and warm skin, until they both could take no more. Without breaking her gaze, Trinity whispered her request. "Now." He held her tightly as he came, more sure than ever that this was right. He was more sure of it than anything he had ever been sure of. "I love you so much," he half-whispered, half-panted to her. And they collapsed, half-sobbing, half-laughing, in each other's arms.

"Trinity?"

"Hmmm?"

"You know what the Oracle told me?"

"What did she tell you?"

"She said it seemed to her that I was waiting for something. I didn't understand what she meant then. But I think I've figured it out: that until whatever I was waiting for happened, I could not be the one."

"What were you waiting for?"

"I didn't know it then, but I know now. I was waiting for you."


	2. Part II

BigOne2

READ PART ONE FIRST.

Centaur's A/N: Yeah! Finally got this thing posted. I know, I know, it took us long enough, but it's here, and it's good. I'm not going to say anything about the parts I wrote specifically, because if I did my job properly, you won't be able to tell, which is the whole idea. Scottishlass--I still bow down to your incredible genius. Now, on to Part III...

Scottishlass' A/N: Okay, y'all. I've been working on this for over a year, so obviously others have stumbled on the same ideas I've had. They were original at the time of creation, as I think all of them tend to be. Thanks to Centaur for giving this piece of work something it desperately needed: PLOT (and the motivation to keep going). As she mentioned, you shouldn't be able to tell where we picked up and left off...strange we write alike. We're going someplace with this, folks. Hope you're along for the ride. 

Rated R for strong language. We're foul-mouthed creatures...can't help it.

Neo stared at the top of the bunk. Wow. He was still numb, but also extremely relaxed and comfortable. After separating themselves, Trinity curled right into him and fell asleep. Neo held her there, running his fingers through her hair and listening to the beating of his own heart. 

Growing restless, he kissed Trinity on the forehead and headed to the bathroom. He stared at himself in the mirror, still flushed from their previous activities. He smiled to himself in the mirror, ignoring the little voice in his head that reminded him that deep down he was still king of dorks. He waggled his eyebrows at himself, trying to look sexy, but only accomplished making himself laugh. 

"Oh, shut up. I'm in fucking _love_," he said to the mirror before stepping in the shower to clean up.

Trinity was still asleep by the time he was finished showering; he quietly stepped into the room, realizing that he'd left his clothes back in detox. "Humph," he snorted, confused, before remembering there was a closet on the far side of their room. Opening the left door, he found a dark pair of pants, several folded gray tee-shirts, undergarments and socks, a new pair of boots, and a knit stocking cap. "Cool," he thought, wondering where his old clothes had disappeared to. Upon opening the right side of the cabinet he found a new, shiny pair of dress shoes and a garment bag containing a suit.

Neo debated between casual and formal for a moment, then took out the suit and changed. He checked himself in the mirror before heading out into the hallway. Oh, yeah.

Morpheus was outside the door waiting for him.

"Ah, you look refreshed," said Morpheus, looking calmer and more relaxed than Neo had ever thought he could ever possibly look.

"Have you been out here long?" Neo asked casually, wondering if Morpheus, well, had heard anything out of the ordinary.

"No, just a few moments."

Neo nodded his head in silent thanks. 

"Nice duds, eh?" He tugged on the jacket of his suit; it was a real-life version of the one he wore to his visit to the Oracle.

Morpheus nodded, smiling.

"You look good yourself," Neo continued, reaching out to put an arm around his mentor. "It's good to see you looking...well, alive."

"Ditto."

"Where's Tank?"

"Detox for a true human is a relatively easy process. He was released a few hours ago. He's probably with his family. And Trinity?"

"Napping," said Neo, trying to suppress his I've-just-had-sex grin. The older man pretended not to notice.

"Ah, well, I'm sure you're looking forward to seeing the city. She's a beautiful place."

"So I've heard."

"We're going to take a hovercraft tour this evening, before lights out. They're having a dinner tonight at the city council board in your honor at nine. After that, you're free to do as you please for a few days."

"A dinner in my honor, huh? Word spreads fast."

"Instantaneously. I would have loved to have seen their eyes drop when you destroyed Smith."

"They watched it on the screen? In code?"

"Now you're catching on." Morpheus smiled a deep, genuine smile. "You're going to be pretty popular around here for the next few days, you know."

"Yeah. Well, I'm not so good at that."

"Trinity will be at your side. I'm sure between the two of you, you will be just fine."

"A dinner in my honor. Probably explains the clothes."

Morpheus nodded his bald head.

"So is this a real dinner, or same old slop dressed up with dye or something?"

"No, Neo," Morpheus explained, "this is one down-home well-cooked meal. It will be delicious." He leaned in closer, "wreaks havoc on your stomach. We haven't eaten real food for a couple of years, remember."

Neo chuckled. "Great. Maybe I'll have solid shit again."

"Don't count on it," Morpheus laughed.

In her dream she was back on her simulated beach, letting the wind blow sand into her hair. The sky was gray and dismal and the seafoam that sprayed her face vaguely reminded her of snowflakes. Her long skirt whipped around her ankles viciously. Feet dug into the cold sand, she stood at the crossroad of what seemed like the present and eternity. 

Yet she stood smiling, happy. Deep inside her dream Trinity held onto the feeling of being loved by Neo. The seed of something new had been planted deep inside her; she joyously awaited the blossom. She and Neo were now one. In love, and together. She knew now that she was an integral part of Neo being the One, and it filled her with pride and sheer happiness. For a moment she even thought she could force herself to dump the shell that she'd created over her hard years fighting for freedom. Finally she could shed the hardness that had slowly grown around her heart.

Something caught her eye; she turned and walked away from the waves, then stooped to examine the sand. There was nothing there, save the thousands of wet tiny grains. She dug her hands deep, loving the feel of the earth. Without reason, she began to dig. Cold sand slipped between her fingers as she slowly moved the sand away, exposing it's cool, wet underlayer. Gently she scooped her hands into the cold sand.

But her smile faded abruptly.

Something was buried in the sand. 

She peered closer, working her fingers around something unusual. 

The dreamscape changed, the weather growing more vicious. Still she worked around the object in the sand until she realized what lay beneath her. 

Horrified, Trinity brushed wet sand away from the body, uncovering the face. It was Switch. Trinity knitted her eyebrows in confusion, but before she could process what she'd seen the sand-covered lids snapped open.

A gravelly voice escaped crusted lips. "I'm happy for you." 

Trinity screamed, both in her dream and out loud, waking herself up. She sat up abruptly, then recognized the urge to vomit and stumbled out of bed, sill naked, and dashed to the bathroom.

After several rounds of retching, she crumpled next to the toilet, sobbing.

Tank knocked five times before even daring to step into the room that Trinity and Neo shared. Although he was fairly positive Morpheus would have picked up Neo by now, God forbid he disrupt anything.

He heard her before he saw her, and was instantly concerned.

"Trinity? Are you in here? It's Tank."

He saw a shadow scamper across the light that peeked through the crack in the bathroom door. The crying stopped. 

"Tank? Hold on a second," came the tiny voice. A few moments later, a pale Trinity poked her head around the door. She was a mess.

Even though they were close friends, Trinity guarded her emotions carefully. She rarely smiled or even showed grief when they lost a crewmate. Tank had certainly never seen her cry before, not once. He was seriously concerned.

"Oh, God, Trinity. Are you all right?"

"I broke," she whimpered, trying to blink the tears from her blood-shot eyes as she stepped into the room, clutching her towel to her chest. "I just broke."

"What's wrong, Trinity?"

"I saw her," she sobbed. "Tank, I saw her."

"Who?" he asked desperately. 

Trinity took a deep breath and tried to regain composure. "I saw Switch. I was dreaming and I was on a beach and I was digging in the sand...she was there. Under the sand. Alive..."

"She's gone, Trinity. She's gone."

"She spoke to me, asked me if I was happy."

"And are you?"

"Am I supposed to be?" she asked, her voice cracking.

"Yes," came his gentle answer he pulled her to him. 

"I don't know what to feel," she sobbed. "But finally, at last, I _feel_. I guess that's a step in the right direction."

"You'll never quite understand," muttered Trinity as they slowly walked towards the housing units. "You're completely human. You've never been in the Matrix. You haven't become what I have."

"You're still the Trinity I know and love."

"I suppose in a way I am. But do you realize how hard we are? 

"You have a right to be hard. Snatched out of the life you know and then asked to build a completely new one. It's not like you could even make your own choice as to what path you wanted to walk."

"Since when did you take the other side?"

"I'm not taking the other side. I just wanted you to know that your feelings are justified."

"You never lost it," she said after a moment of silence.

Tank raised his eyebrows in question.

"Your humanity."

"I wasn't trapped in the Matrix, though. Ever. I've never had to harden; I've never been deceived."

She exhaled sharply. "It's not an excuse. Tank, before we unplugged Neo, I didn't ever realize how wrapped up I was in this war. We all were. Be lived it, breathed it. I lived with them for three years and now they're _dead_ and I didn't even bother to get to know them!" She shook her head, fighting back tears. "We didn't even take the time to get to know each other. Not really. There was so much petty shit; we were too guarded. Think of all the times when we were together and never talked about a damned thing! When did it all end?"

Tank nodded, waiting for her to continue.

"When did we forget to be human?" she said quietly. "We're fighting to preserve our species but completely neglect to establish the bonds with each other, the emotional attachment that makes us human." She wiped her nose with her sleeve. "We're too hard. Goddamnit, Tank, this is the first time I've really cried in years. There's something wrong with that. Really wrong."

"I've noticed how you guys release emotion so differently," he said after a pause, referring to the Matrix-born. "You think you can just jump into the computer and let your rage out. And you do, and you come back all refreshed and you think you've gotten rid of it. But the sadness never goes away, Trinity, until you let it. You need to let it out here. Where it's real."

"I miss them," she whispered finally, "but I'm so..."

"You're happy," he provided for her. "For the first time since you've joined us, you're truly happy."

She exhaled sadly. "Yeah. I guess I am."

"Then you need to let yourself be happy. It's okay to feel both at once."

"Don't you miss your brother?"

"God yes. More than I can tell you. It hurts. Damn, it hurts. But Trinity, I said my good-byes. I'll always remember them, especially Dozer. He was a part of me. He always will be." He looked her over, trying to find the right words. "You haven't had time to say good-bye, Trinity. Believe me. It's what they'd want you to do."

Neo shook the man's hand nervously. He'd never felt comfortable in formal situations, but this was beyond unnerving. The last hour had been nothing but clasping hands and staring into excited eyes. "This is Neo," Morpheus would say plainly. "You are the One," they'd say back as if entranced. Neo wondered briefly if the words were tattooed across his forehead. How did one answer something like that? _Yup, that's me, the One. Here to save mankind. Oh, and by the way, can we eat now?_

He'd felt extremely vulnerable since the incident with the machines. His performance against the agents had even stunned him, and by the end of their fight he completely and utterly knew that he was in control of the Matrix. That he was the One. But he hadn't been back in the Matrix since the incident and was beginning to doubt his "special powers" after all. He'd only done anything interesting once, anyhow. Still the stirring of the inevitable wriggled deep inside of him; there was a destiny that he was definitely a part of. And with time, he knew that he would be a key factor in destroying the Matrix.

Yet this was not home. That was apparent in the first few hours that he was in Zion. It was too, well, normal. As he and Morpheus walked slowly through the streets, nodding at the staring citizens, Neo saw things he thought he'd never see again: children playing, mothers hanging laundry, and people carrying out other mundane daily tasks. It was simply too normal. He knew as he watched them that he, Trinity, and Morpheus belonged someplace else. They were soldiers, fighters. He nearly chuckled at that thought. For thirty years of his life he'd been a spineless, wimpy, corporate computer programming analyst. He was just getting used to his newfound self upon the ship. But Zion, he thought, was a bit of a joke. Like Disney World, it was the happiest fucking place on earth. He could tell they followed the war, knew its history, reveled in their small victories. But it was something fought beyond their private microcosm, something they, most likely, would never be affected by unless they signed up to join the resistance. From what Morpheus told him, many free-borns had no desire to leave their land of milk and honey, and the war had become nothing more than entertainment - a never-ending episode of "Survivor". They wore their innocence on their faces like their lives were one big masquerade gala. He supposed the only thing they knew of war was simply what they were told of it.

Neo felt this deep within his bones as he and Morpheus made their way to the city's center, where Neo was going to be introduced to the free world. He knew now that there was a place for him. As much as he had a hard time believing it, he was a rebel, a fighter. Yes, he was the One. Trinity had convinced him of that. Together, they could manipulate the Matrix, fight the machines, win their freedom. But handshake after handshake, his heart began to fill with the dread of the inevitable: he would have to be their savior, their messiah, whether he wanted to or not.

They walked the rest of the way to Tank's mother's place in silence, Tank's muscled arm wrapped gently around his superior officer's shoulder. 

"Why does your mother have to see me anyway?" asked Trinity after a lengthily walk in silence. It was her way of telling Tank that she was okay now.

"A gift," he replied, his tone lightening. "There's an assembly tonight for you guys. You're going to be just as popular around here the next few days as Neo."

"Oh, I seriously doubt that. They seemed to want to keep him pretty cloistered when we docked."

"Well, it's not like you've been a couple long," Tank said as he fidgeted with the gate that led to his mother's quarters. "Imagine how many young ladies will be disappointed once they hear that the One's already found his life partner." As Tank opened the gate, Trinity watched a streetsweeper make his way down the walkway. He nodded amiably when he caught her gaze, but she followed him with her eyes as he continued his task. "You coming, Trinity?" asked Tank after realizing he'd lost her.

"Yeah. Just weird, that's all."

"What?" he asked, eyebrows furrowing.

"The most important war in human history is going on and they still never forget to keep the streets clean."

The buzz of thousands of voices filled Neo's ears and caused his head to pound. Seated next to his captain and an open seat for the second-in-command, Neo watched in awe as more and more people filled the dining hall. Morpheus had explained the evening's festivities: first, a dinner in Neo's honor, then a briefing on the events, and finally a tour of Zion by mini-craft. Neo had decided an hour ago that he'd much rather be back in bed with Trinity.

"Hang in there," whispered Morpheus, sensing his friend's uneasiness. "This will be done soon enough."

"Oh, hunny, don't you just look adorable!" Tank's mother crooned.

Trinity raised her eyebrows. She was a lot of things, but adorable simply wasn't on the roster.

"Wow, Trin," Tank marveled. "Neo's jaw's gonna fall off."

"Well that would be most unfortunate," she mumbled back to him under her breath as Jolly pinched in material around her waist. 

"Tank was almost right about sizing," she was saying. "He got everything right except the waist..."

"Really Jolly, you shouldn't have done this," said Trinity, trying to surpress her natural instinct to hide her emotions. 

It was black, sort of. A kind of material she hadn't seen before, even in the Matrix. It was black but with an undertone of red, so that when the light hit it right it was almost a shade of a deep merlot. Artificial textiles was a productive pastime in Zion, and some Zioners who still carried a taste for style reveled in the possibilities. Jolly never failed to send her once-a-year package to the Neb, filled with hand-knit pullovers and new finely-woven undergarments. They were generic and gray, of course, but served their duty well, and were able to pass down from crew member to crew member. On extremely cold nights aboard the Neb, Morpheus would allow the crew to use their most prized (and consequently least used) items from Jolly: blankets, thick and woolly, to huddle together with. Trinity remembered the first time Morpheus had allowed them to open the cabinet that held the treasure or warmth and realized whoever made such a blanket was a goddess.

Jolly did have a way with material, and this time she was able to show Trinity that she could make much more than blankets. The top of the dress looked like it was separate from the bottom, a sleeveless shell attached to a full skirt. The top was fitting, complete with a deep, narrow v-slit that came down to the flat spot between her breasts. The skirt was long but not full, by no means puffy or too girlish. It was definitely sophisticated. Trinity had to admit that Jolly had done an amazing job. Here she was, wearing a dress that she actually liked. 

"Okay," said Jolly, taking Trinity by the hand, "it's time to see it for yourself. Oh, hunny, this is so perfect!"

The older woman led Trinity into her dressing area and turned on the lights.

Trinity nearly didn't recognize herself. The dress was very flattering, so flattering that she was immediately able to discard her embarrassment and hug Jolly with true thanks. 

"This is so beautiful," she whispered to the older woman, tears in her eyes.

"No, hunny, it's you who's beautiful. Just look at you!"

She stood by Trinity, beaming at her creation and at the joy it brought into the life of this young one.

"Now, dear," she said before she got too emotional, "you're missing just one thing."

"Some lipstick?" asked Trinity, suddenly embracing her long-forgotten feminine side. "I really need some."

"Well, we can get that for you, but I'm thinking of something else. You better go see Tank. He's got it for you."

"Thank you," she said earnestly.

"Oh, you get yourself on going now, you're making me cry. Go on, hun!"

Trinity walked out of the dressing room, listening closely to the light whispering of her dress as she moved. Tank stood in the living area, now changed into a nice suit.

"Well look at you," she said, smiling. "You look great, big brother."

"And you look like a girl," he replied, obviously proud of his part in Trinity's surprise gift.

"I take it we're going somewhere," she said, eyeing Tank's suit.

"Yeah. Of course. It's not everyday the One stops in for a visit."

"Where is Neo, anyway? Have you done something with him, too?"

"Ah, that's up to Morpheus. Anyway, I got one more thing for ya."

Trinity watched dumbfounded as Tank reached behind him and pulled out something sparkly.

"Dozer found the stones when we were kids," he said sadly. "He spent a full year making it for mum, but she wanted you to have it now. Dozer would have wanted you to have it."

Tears welled up in her eyes as she fingered the silver necklace. Three crimson faceted round stones hung from its center, one on top of the other but separated by a thin silver chain.

He held it up for her to see before moving closer to fasten it behind her neck. It fit perfectly with the dress, the last drop hanging directly in the center of the deep v-slit, cold against her skin. 

"Thank you, Tank" she whispered, sniffing. "Thanks to Dozer, too. This is so beautiful."

"Well, ya ready?" he asked, saving the pain of talking about Dozer for later.

"I guess so. Time to face the pirhannas."

"More importantly," he said, opening the door for her, "time to eat!"

Neo couldn't figure out what to ogle at more: the taste of solid food or the vision sitting next to him. Trinity had entered with Tank just in time to save Neo from another barrage of well-wishers, and at her entrance he nearly forgot what he was saying mid-sentence. Her beauty shown from within this evening; her earlier sadness dissipated to make way for the happiness of love. She walked in slowly, tall and proud, calmly shaking the hands of the greeters and speaking with refined dignity. Few knew her insecurities, and Neo marveled at how well she was able to push back her emotional side and once again shift from Trinity to whom he'd recently made love, to Trinity, second-in-command of the Nebachanezzer. He realized, then, that the two were one and the same, and he loved her even more for it.

He'd anticipated that she would take her seat next to him without sharing the status of their relationship with the masses, but she smiled warmly at him and instantly sought out his hand under the table. 

"How are you doing?" she asked quietly while she scanned the crowd.

"Honestly, I'd rather be back in our quarters," he admitted.

"I know. Me too."

"You're beautiful, Trinity."

She sucked her lower lip in embarrassment. "Thank you."

"So what do you do at these..." Neo gestured to the crowds, wondering whether to call the gathering a ball or a meeting.

"This isn't the norm. Usually council meetings are only thirty or so in number. This is a hero's welcome, Neo. Why watch it on a telescreen when you could see the One in person?"

Neo shrugged his shoulders and stabbed some unknown vegetable with his fork. It was an odd realization, but he realized that it was the first fork he'd ever held, solid and shiny, unlike the standard spork of the ships' mess halls.

After dinner, Neo listened as a tall woman, presumably some head-Zionist honcho, spoke confidently to the seated crowd. Dinner was relaxed, but he could feel the shift in the air when the meeting agendas were distributed. Neo soon found the political side to the war tiring and learned to tune it out.

"When are they going to bury them?" Neo whispered to Morpheus as the speaker droned on. 

Morpheus looked at him sorrowfully, realizing that there was so much that Neo still didn't understand. "They're not going to be buried. We're already buried here. They're cremated instead."

"Well, when is the ceremony?"

"Neo," Morpheus began gently, "there is no ceremony. We are soldiers, nothing more."

Neo raised his eyebrows, waiting for Morpheus to continue. The captain leaned his head closer to Neo's and spoke as quietly as he could. "Seems I should have informed you on Zion principals and politics." He paused momentarily. "And why I decided to become a soldier. But now is not the time."

A jab in the ribs from Trinity caused Neo to sit up straight and notice that the room had grown hushed. "They're waiting for you, Neo," she whispered without moving her lips from her smile.

"What am I supposed to say?" he asked seriously.

"You'll know when you get there."

As he stood from his chair, Neo was suddenly flooded with images from his past life, his life as Thomas Anderson, copper-top slave worker, poor in social situations, poorer public speaker, subordinate little ant. An unseen hand clenched around his throat and squeezed tighter as he made his way nervously through the tables. Pairs of pale, curious eyes followed his ungraceful movements as he moved slowly to the stage. 

It started as almost a whisper; the sound of hushed voices whispering four syllables that grew into a deafening roar as he got closer: He is the One! He is the One! Fingers and hands snaked toward him from the mass of unknowns, clouding his vision and stealing his oxygen. Their chants grew louder and more stifling until he could no longer breathe, until his legs failed to support him. 

Then, from somewhere behind him came the strength of his captain, holding his crumpling body and dragging him away from public eye into the dark recesses behind the stage.

Neo's eyelids fluttered before snapping open. He was aware of the cool darkness first, then the muffled sounds of an anxious crowd behind dense curtains. 

"Oh, God," he muttered, turning to spit. "What happened?"

"You fainted," said Morpheus.

Neo sat up and put his head between his knees. "They expect the One and they get...nothing."

"You were not prepared. I apologize, I should have warned you."

"How could you have known I couldn't handle this?"

"What, solid food?" he smiled, teeth white in the dark.

"That's not funny," said Neo quietly. "You know I'm no good at this."

"You are only as good as you think you are."

"Will you stop with the bullshit?!" 

Morpheus' eyebrows shot up.

"I didn't ask to be The One, Morpheus," Neo choked. "Everyone here thinks I'm some sort of god, and I'm not. I'm just me. Just Neo. And I'm not going to get up there and pretend to be anything else!"

"No, Neo, you're something more..."

"I don't want to be something more!" he spat. "So in the Matrix, I'm The One. But here, in the real world, I'm just me."

"And what's so wrong with just you?" Morpheus exploded. "Guess what, Neo? There's a woman out there named Trinity who's madly in love with you. Who do you think she fell in love with? You and your badass self, running around and shooting at anything that moves? Your ability to stop bullets? I've lived with that woman for seven years now and I haven't seen her open up to anyone except for you. Damn it, Neo, I've barely seen her smile at anyone. And you think that's nothing special?"

"I do, Morpheus, but..."

"You don't understand, Neo," said Morpheus sadly, exhaling his anger. "You have to stop thinking of this as two different worlds. Learn to exist in both. Why do you refuse to be who you are? I thought you'd learned that by now." 

Neo sighed, frustrated.

"Embrace it, Neo," Morpheus said at length. "Weave yourself back into the fabric from which you were cut."

"Morpheus, I..."

"You must do it, Neo, and you must do it now. Find your strength. It lies not in a tangle of ones and zeros, not in lines of code. You trust the Matrix. There, you leave behind your doubt, your disbelief. Find that within yourself. These people are followers. Now is the time for you to lead them." He nodded his head in the direction of the stage, then walked quickly away, leaving the chant of the crowd ringing in Neo's ears.

From somewhere in the crowd, an important woman now forgotten clenched her fist over her heart. She mouthed the words, "Get up, Neo." And he did.

Slowly, as if he were approaching a creature with teeth, Neo stepped up to the podium and lowered his face to the microphone. "Hi," he said to the crowd, his voice followed by an unnerving squeal of audio feedback. He adjusted the mike and stepped back. "Um..." he began, feeling his stomach begin to knot and the sweat bead up on his forehead. For a moment he was sure that he would faint. The crowd became a blur of color and movement and seemed to swirl around him. He grasped the podium for support, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. Neo closed his eyes briefly, then opened them, only to reveal an empty stare.

From somewhere in the crowd, Trinity leaned forward in concern, mentally encouraging Neo not to give up. As she moved, the jewel at her chest caught the light. Neo saw the sparkle from within the swirling mass and concentrated on it. Trinity slowly came into focus, her eyes pleading, urging him to continue. _Give me your strength,_ he thought, marveling as the room came into focus once more and his vision stabilized. Trinity relaxed. Their eyes connected between the bobbing heads of the crowd. He nearly heard her say it. _Now. Do it now. Be who you are. Tell them what you know._ He inhaled deeply, relaxed his shoulders, and let the words of a newly-born warrior pour out into the masses.

Although he was well aware of the dark, frowning faces of the supreme council, Morpheus allowed himself a smile as he saw the people accept their new leader.

Trinity pulled off the heavy welder's mask, then stretched her arms over her head. Her thighs and lower back were throbbing—she had been squatting for over two hours and the muscles had cramped. She had spent most of the past three weeks working on repairing the Nebuchadnezzar. The day after the banquet, Neo had been shuttled off by military strategists and researchers eager to plug him into program after program to see just how far they could push him, so since then, she hardly ever saw him except for at night. 

Tank had been spending all of his time at home. Though no public service was offered for the fallen soldiers, in private, the family grieved. He had invited Trinity to join them, but she had refused, images of her nightmare still fresh in her mind. She grieved more easily when she was alone, and Tank understood.

Morpheus had spent the past three weeks trapped in lavish conference rooms, in meetings with officials. Being commander of the One's ship placed him in the awkward position of having to outline his immediate plans to the military heads. If he was to command this priceless "resource," as they called it, he had to prove to them that he knew how he was going to do it. He hated it, she knew, because he had never believed in planning these things too far ahead without any knowledge of available resources or manpower. But the fact remained that he was subordinate to them, and to defy them would be cause for court-martial. 

Morpheus had told her to take some time off; to visit some of the city shops or go spend some time at one of the public hot springs, and to leave the repairs to the mechanics. She dismissed him, though, explaining that she'd taken enough time off already and that she wanted to be productive. Trinity could only stand remaining idle for short periods of time, and she knew that the repairs needed as many extra hands as possible.

She looked at her hands now. They were coated in thick, black engine grease; it was slimy between her fingers and curdled under her fingernails. The actual feeling of greasy hands was remarkably similar to the way it had felt in her pre-unplugging days, from when she used to work on her motorcycle. _Ironic_, she thought, _they couldn't replicate the intensity of touching another person, or, _she laughed to herself_, figure out what to make chicken taste like. But damn, when it comes to engine grease, they got it bang-on_. Then, though, she had always kept a bottle of gritty mechanic's soap around to scrub the grime away, but here, such a thing didn't exist. She knew she'd be trying to wash it off for the next week.

Mask under her arm and welder on her shoulder, Trinity headed for the hatch door. She wanted to keep working, but had been hampered by, of all things, the need for a longer extension cord. The rest of the workers had left for lunch fifteen minutes ago and she didn't know where to find one herself, so she decided to take a short break also and come back to it later. She kept the welder on her shoulder as she closed the hatch behind her, which is most likely why she didn't see Neo approaching. As she turned to walk down the gangplank, she quite literally bumped into him, and he stumbled three steps back before regaining his balance. 

She couldn't keep from laughing.

"Nice to see you too," he retorted, jokingly, before kissing her briefly and taking the welder's mask out of her hand. "What kind of shape is she in?"

"Flyable, and the Core has been rebuilt. Most of what's left to be done is just structural and architectural, nothing technical. Rebuilding walkways and walls, and the sleeping quarters on the lower level were all destroyed, things like that. Oh, and the med bay still needs to be fixed up." She set the welder down on a shelf in the tool storage shed at the foot of the gangway, and motioned for Neo to set the mask down with it. Finally, with the welder out of the way, she could see him properly.

He looked exhausted.

"So how about you, Neo? Have the military brains succeeded in figuring out just what makes the legendary One tick?"

Neo gave a little smile and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "They keep asking me 'how,' Trinity. They want me to explain how I deleted the Agent, how I moved so fast, how I dodged bullets, and how…" he took her hand and squeezed it gently, "how I came back from the dead." He laughed once, quietly, and then squeezed her hand again. "That last one is the only one I know the answer to. But I still couldn't explain it to them. I mean, how do you tell a bunch of military officials that you just sort of… found a new reason to live?"

Trinity stopped him right there in the middle of the sidewalk and pulled him to her, resting her head in the crook of his neck and holding him so tightly that she could feel each of his ribs pressing into the muscles of her arms through the fabric of both their shirts. He held her with equal strength, and kissed the top of her head. Then, unexplainably, he chuckled, once.

"What?" Trinity asked.

"You know… I can fly, now."

Trinity looked up and grimaced. "You uploaded flight? I could have taught you, and learning to fly a hovercraft is so much more fun the old fashioned way—"

"No, no, no, that's not what I meant," Neo laughed, his eyes twinkling mischievously. "In the Matrix, I can fly. Superman style."

Trinity's arms fell back to her sides, and she stepped back. For a moment, her expression was unreadable. "You can fly."

"Like a bird."

"Shit… _shit!_ Neo, that's fantastic! Damn, I hope I'm there when—" she cut herself off mid-sentence, and now her eyes had begun to twinkle, too. Suddenly she seized Neo's hand and began to pull him down the street.

"Trinity—where are we going?"

"To get Tank and Morpheus."

"Why?"

"I think it's time to give the Neb a test-drive."

It wasn't hard to convince the captain and operator to come along for the ride. Morpheus jumped at the excuse to get away from strategic meetings, and Tank was sold as soon as he heard that Neo could fly. Zion officials insisted on one of their own accompanying the crew, in case something should happen and they were to find themselves short-staffed. To appease the council, Trinity suggested Circuit, the young medic who detoxed her and Neo, come along. So an hour later, with Morpheus and Trinity at the controls and Tank and Neo booting up the computers, the Nebuchadnezzar began its slow re-ascent to broadcast depth. As they passed through the city boundary, Neo felt his stomach loosen and the muscles in his shoulders relax. While he liked Zion well enough, he found it to be unnatural, somehow—exaggerated. Too perfect to be real. But now, back on the ship, things felt right. This was home, he knew. This cramped metal ship—with its air that smelled of steel and recirculated oxygen, its hard, narrow bunks, and its creaking platforms; with its operator that he trusted, its Captain that he respected, and Trinity whom he loved and idolized more than he could ever have thought possible—it was home.

It took three hours to reach broadcast depth. Neo had spent most of the time sleeping. He hadn't wanted to, at first, but Trinity had half-jokingly pulled rank and insisted; he was completely exhausted and needed the few hours of undisturbed rest. She had hoped, originally, that she could go lie down with him, but Morpheus had told her that they needed to talk for a few minutes. So now, after mothering Neo into his room and closing the door behind him, she made her way back to the cockpit and sat down in the copilot's seat.

"This is going to be harder than I ever imagined," Morpheus said, after a pause.

Trinity said nothing, but waited for him to continue.

"Everyone has a different agenda, in Zion. And now, with Neo found," he shook his head, "everything's even worse than usual. They argue over whether to send Neo off to mind his own affairs, or to study him and see if his abilities can be taught; over whether to send him off in a ship to be useful, or to protect him in Zion until a clear course of action is established... Everyone argues but nobody makes decisions, so nothing comes of it. One man even suggested..." his voice trailed off.

"What?" 

"One person suggested that the two of you be separated."

Trinity's head shot up at that, and she turned to face her mentor, incredulous. "You're kidding."

"I'm afraid not. They've always believed that emotional soldiers are slow thinkers, and nobody wants the One being killed over that. I think I dissuaded them, though. I told them I didn't think it would be wise to change Neo's command patterns considering his age, his power, and the fact that he was unplugged so recently."

"Doesn't anybody think to ask what he wants?"

"They don't care what he wants, Trinity. They keep their own motives, and that's what they care about. That's all they care about."

Trinity turned and looked out the front window. Morpheus wove skillfully between the piles of debris, turning corners at some junctions, and driving straight through others. It struck her, then, just how much every tunnel looked like every other one. And since they were looking to simply rise to a certain altitude, when and where they turned was fairly irrelevant. Neither she nor Morpheus could repeat this specific route if asked. But what if they had chosen a different one? What if, at that junction they just passed, Morpheus had chosen to turn instead of passing straight through it? It was possible, indeed, that nothing would have happened, and that their journey down that path would have been similar to the one they had chosen. A different path to the same destination. But what if they had turned, and found themselves nose-to-nose with a fleet of sentinels? Who was to say that sentinels weren't waiting for them straight ahead now, that could have been easily avoided if they had turned earlier? 

There was no code, in the real world. Nothing was predictable. You simply had to take your chances and stick with them, and be prepared to deal with the consequences.

"They won't separate me from Neo," Trinity said quietly, her gaze focused intently on her hands resting in her lap.

"Hmm?"

"They can't separate us. And if they try, so help me, I'll fight them."

"Ah, Trinity, you rest assured—the Nebuchadnezzar will not leave port without all its remaining crew on board. I had an instinct with Neo that told me he was the One. Now, I have an instinct with the two of you that tells me you're in this deep, together."

Trinity went to wake Neo fifteen minutes before they reached broadcast depth. He was sprawled out on his back on top of the blankets, his mouth half-open, and—Trinity suppressed a small smile—he was snoring lightly. She cupped his cheek in her hand, and with her thumb, gently traced the dark circle under his eye. He didn't stop snoring. Morpheus' words echoed in her mind: _You're in this deep, together._

"Neo," she whispered, "time to get up." He didn't stir.

"Neo," she said, a little louder this time. The snoring stopped, but he still didn't move. _Fine,_ she thought, _you want to play hardball?_ And without another thought, she kissed him. He jumped a little as he woke up, and then she felt his hand creep up to hold her face.

__

Deep, together. 

A moment later they parted, hesitantly. Neo kept his eyes closed for a moment, then opened them, slowly, and smiled at her. 

"Broadcast depth, Neo. We should be about there now."

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. He still needed sleep, she saw, but he looked better than he had earlier.

"Time to go scare the shit out of some Agents, eh?" He laughed. "How do you want to do this?"

"I thought you could go make them a scary phone call—you know, attract their attention—then go put on a little flying show, and I'll meet you by the exit. How does that sound?"

"Sounds like a plan to me. Let's go."

Neo and Trinity stood face-to-face in the construct. Trinity tried hard to peg her emotion at the moment, but couldn't do it. It wasn't fear, really—she trusted Neo completely, and knew that he believed in himself, now. No, it wasn't fear. She remembered the last time they had stood there, preparing to go into the Matrix on a mission she had written off as suicide. It was the same, now, in so many ways, just the two of them standing there in the same white space, wearing similar if not identical clothing.

"So, Superman, what do you need?" she asked in mock-seriousness. _Guns. Lots of guns._ The words echoed through her mind. She suppressed them.

"Nothing," he said simply, and shrugged. She noticed, then, that he hadn't put his glasses on yet, and that where the skin under his eyes had been darkened by exhaustion in the real world, now there was only white, healthy flesh. 

Then, he put his glasses on, and he looked the same.

"So here's what we're going to do," Trinity announced. We'll send you in first via a phone near the city centre. I'll come in right after through a phone a few miles away, corner of Green and First, and call you when I get there. Then you do your thing, and I'll be waiting for you by the exit whenever you're ready to leave. All clear?"

"You bet. Let's go."

Neo materialized in a phone booth at a busy city intersection. Seconds later, his cell phone rang. Trinity. He answered it. "I'm in," came her voice, crystal clear. "Have fun."

"Yeah," he said, "see you in a few."

They hung up.

Neo tucked his cell phone into his pocket, then turned to the payphone. The receiver was cold in his palm, greasy from years of use. _But it's never really been used, it's not even really there_. Reactions like that had become instinctive to him in programs; he had a real need to distinguish between reality and simulation. Trinity's voice resonated in his head: "They can't replicate what it feels like when my lips touch yours." He smiled to himself. _No, they can't._

He dialed, and the phone had already rung once when he realized that he didn't know what he was going to say. He clawed for his cellphone with his free hand, intending to call Trinity—she was so good at saying exactly what needed to be said in as few words as possible. The phone snapped open in his hand, and his thumb reached for the speed-dial—

He caught himself. _Neo, you dolt. You can do this. You can't always run back to her. You can do this on your own._ Images of the banquet flooded his mind, and he remembered the way the jewel on her necklace had caught his eye... he remembered the way she had looked, then, and how he had known just what to say.

The call connected.

Neo opened his mouth, and the perfect words slipped out. "I know you're out there. I can feel you now. I know that you're afraid. You're afraid of us. You're afraid of change. I don't know the future. I didn't come here to tell you how this is going to end. I came here to tell you how it's going to begin. I'm going to hang up this phone and then I'm going to show these people what you don't want them to see. I'm going to show them a world without you, a world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries, a world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you."

Neo hung up.

The Agents hung up.

And not too far away, on the corner of Green and First, an innocuous third-party eavesdropper detached a blue box from a payphone, smiled, and hung up as well. Phreaking had never been Trinity's specialty in her pre-unplugging days, but like most hackers, she had dabbled. And now, for the first time, her ability had proved useful. Her decision not to help Neo prepare a speech had been a conscious one. He had to become a leader almost overnight, and though she wanted nothing more than to act as a buffer for him and to help make everything easier, she knew that he had to learn on his own. But with that brief phone call, she realized that he was more ready than even he believed.

"Trinity!"

By instinct, she made an about face, scanning the empty streets for the source of the voice. A fraction of a second later she remembered, and looked up. And there he was, hovering twenty or thirty feet above her head, laughing. 

Trinity just stared. "Jesus, Neo, I--"

"Hold on," he interrupted. And before she could react, he took off again, so fast she could barely follow his movement, up into the clouds. An instant later he reappeared, falling so fast that for an instant she was certain he wouldn't be able to stop before he hit the pavement of the intersection. She reached a hand out to him, "Neo!" and he screeched to a halt beside her, hovering three feet off the ground. With a playful wink, he turned a slow, floating somersault before coming to rest, gently as air, by her side.

Before either had a chance to move, Neo's cell-phone rang. He cast Trinity a side-long glance before answering it—both knew who it was, and what he had to say. 

"Holy shit, man! That was fan-fuckin'-tastic!" Neo instantly drew the phone away from his ear as Tank's excited shouts resonated through the earpiece. "I mean, when you said you could fly, I thought that meant you could, I dunno, maybe float a little. But this! Shit, man, that's incredible! How do you do that?"

"I don't know, Tank. I just _do_ it. How about you patch the call through, and we'll talk about it on the other side."

Tank's voice returned to normal, and Neo brought the phone closer to his head. "No can do. That's what I called about. We just got a message from the Oracle—she wants to see you."

"What, now?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Jesus, Tank, I can't see her now. Not yet. I can't do that yet—" 

Trinity's eyes widened as she realized what was being discussed. But Neo couldn't see the Oracle again yet, not with their last visit so fresh in his mind. His hand was pumping furiously, clenching and releasing. She took it in both of hers and squeezed it gently, and he squeezed back, harder.

Neo listened to something Tank was saying, then shook his head, defeated. "Fine," he said quietly, "I guess if I have to go then I... what? Both of us?" Trinity lifted her eyes to meet Neo's then, and saw only confusion. But she was confused, too—both of them to the Oracle, together? She'd never heard of that happening before.

__

You're in this deep, together. 

"Okay, then, we'll go." He nodded into the phone, listening to Tank's directions. "No, I don't know if I'm ready to carry anybody... Why? Because I'm not fast enough to catch up to somebody falling... Yeah, great, send us whatever you usually send." He hung up.

Trinity didn't wait for him to speak. "So the Oracle wants to see both of us. Together. Now."

"That's what Tank said." 

"Shit." She shook her head dejectedly. "Well, all right, let's go. Did he download us any transport?" She smiled inwardly at the thought of riding another brand-new jet-black Speed Triple, but this time with Neo clinging to the back. One of the many small delights she derived from the Matrix was getting to ride fancy motorcycles. The one she had owned in her old life had been a third-hand Honda.

Neo smiled. "We've got a Triumph waiting around the corner. Key's in the ignition." Trinity allowed herself a smile when she saw the bike. She strode over to it confidently, sat down, started the engine and revved it. With a dramatic billowing of his coat, Neo got on behind her and wrapped his arms firmly around her waist.

"Now," she said, "you get to feel _my_ kind of flying." She tapped his mesh-toed boot with heel, "feet on the footpegs, Superman. Let's go." 

As they flew through the city at impossible speeds on a souped-up bike, Neo was struck by how... well, how _normal_ the moment felt. They could have been anyone, then; just another guy riding through the city on a motorcycle with his girlfriend. He smiled to himself as he turned the word over in his mind... _girlfriend_... funny, it wasn't a word he had ever associated with Trinity before. It was like they had skipped that part. She had been his friend, his commanding officer, and yes, the object of his affection and infatuation for awhile, but then she had just made the jump to lover, life partner, soulmate. There was no transition. And while he wasn't necessarily sorry for that, this felt like a girlfriend moment, and he liked it. A normal, easy-reality moment. _Except in my old reality_, he thought, _I never would have had it this good._ He held her tighter, and pressed his face into her hair. Her RSI smelled of leather, hair gel, and soft soap over that essence that was unmistakably Trinity. He inhaled deeply. _No, in my old reality, I would never, ever in a million years have had it this good_. 

He was so lost in his reverie that he didn't notice they had arrived until Trinity switched off the engine. They got off, together, and Trinity pocketed the keys. As one, they turned and passed through the graffiti-tarnished door into the Oracle's building. 

"I take it you two have been getting to know each other a bit now, haven't you?"

Neo blushed slightly, Trinity stared at the floor.

"Now, now, young ones, there's nothing to be embarrassed about." She returned to chopping vegetables. It seemed to Neo that this woman lived in her kitchen. "Has he been good to you, Trinity? Treating you like he should?" she inquired.

"Yes, ma'am."

"Oh, I know. But I like to hear it from you. Soon enough, child, he's going to be able to see right through you." She smiled cryptically and turned to face them, knife in hand. "Have you been enjoying each other's company?"

"Well," began Neo, "we haven't gotten much of a chance to be together. I've been in and out of labs for the past two weeks."

"And how does that make you feel, Neo?"

"I don't know." He thought, eyeing the cracks in the linoleum before answering. "A bit like a hacker. Like, before. Just this time the people asking the questions are supposedly on my side."

"A bit like Moses, you are," said the Oracle. "You've parted the seas and now they want to know exactly how you'll begin the plagues."

"Let my people go," quipped Trinity under her breath. The Oracle arched an eyebrow at her, never missing a beat. 

"You're wondering why I asked you here," she said, squinting her eyes like she was peering into their souls. Neo shrugged his shoulders. "An old lady likes company once and awhile, you know. These kids tire me out. All I needed was for you to stay a little while." 

The Oracle eyed Trinity now in a way that she knew that the wise one was going to prophesy. "A great fire starts with a spark," she said, her countenance suddenly filling the room, "and all I needed to do was make sure that lightning was going to strike at the right time."

There was a long pause while Trinity and Neo tried to make sense of her words. The serious moment ended as abruptly as it came. "Now, now," said the Oracle gaily, "it's about the right time. You two go on and enjoy the rest of the day. And Trinity, Neo's got a surprise for you." She winked at them, her chocolate skin crinkling, before returning to her casserole.

"Nothing like a date with the Oracle to ruin the mood," Neo thought out loud. Trinity snorted, agreeing. They were walking halfway down the block where Trinity had parked the bike when suddenly Neo flinched, listening, sensing something out of the usual. 

"What is it?" Trinity whispered, picking up his change in attitude.

"We gotta get out of here," he whispered back, a look of panic briefly crossing his features.

"Agents?" she asked, her muscles tensing.

"No. Something different. Let's go."

"Neo, you don't need to worry... remember, you're the One."

"Trin, NOW!"

He grabbed her by the arm just as an explosion detonated beneath her feet, flinging them into the air. They landed hard on the cement, Trinity's ankle twisting violently beneath her.

"Fuck," she sobbed as Neo steadied her. 

"Don't think about it, Trin," he said, trying to disguise the panic that was now coursing through his veins. "It's not real, you're fine..."

"Christ, Neo, it hurts..."

"Look at me."

She could barely see him through the smoke and now-settling dust. "Trinity, you're okay. You're okay."

Trinity nodded and allowed Neo to wrap his arm around her waist for balance. "We've got to go."

"What's going on?" she asked in pained gasps.

"Don't know. Something's changed. Not a cut hard line. Something...I can't tell you what. I don't know."

In the distance they could hear the faint jingle of the phone. Thank God for Tank.

"We've got to run, Trinity."

"I can't!"

"Trinity." He looked at her face, scratched from her dive into the concrete and beginning to bruise around her left eye. Her ankle was bent at an impossible angle, a sharp protrusion impaled the leather of her boot. Bone.

"Oh shit," he groaned, panic beginning to surge through his body. 

"Neo, please get out of here..." whimpered Trinity, the situation seeming all too similar to their last time in the Matrix.

Neo tried to calm himself, forcing his panic back where it came from. 

"You know I'm not going anywhere without you." He closed his eyes and prepared for a miracle. "Trinity," he whispered, "I'm going to try something. I don't know if this will work..." Another explosion echoed through the air."...but you've got to relax, okay. Just relax."

"Shit..." tears began to course down her cheeks, cutting their way through the fine dust that they were both covered in.

Neo closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath, and whispered a prayer to a god he'd long forgotten. _Okay, Neo, here it is. Make it happen. _And when he opened his eyes, there it was.

The Matrix. Green, cascading code, shifting, pulsating. He turned his attention to Trinity, and studied her program. It was the first time he'd seen a human's program. The code made little sense to him; it was too intense, much more complicated than an agent's. And there was something strange about her, something out of the ordinary that he couldn't quite pinpoint. He was beginning to wish Tank had made him sit through the six hours it took to upload the intricate details of Matrix code. 

"Fuck," he thought, eyeing the green glow of Trinity's outline. Code was continually changing, flying around her form like gnats. "Okay, Neo, find the ankle. Where in the fuck in this program is her ankle? " As the thought came and went, the area above Trinity's green form began to glow. Easy enough. "Think, Neo, think. Change the program. Delete the pain, fix the ankle." He began to concentrate on changing the code, but as soon as the thought came he saw it change, reverse its pattern, subtract characters. The green outline of her broken bones fused together before his eyes. A wave of joy spread over him, similar to the feeling he first felt when he realized he could actually do kung fu. He did it.

"Neo?"

Trinity's voice brought him back. He blinked his eyes and the Matrix was back in its same old deceiving self. Trinity's eyes met his with wonder. 

"How in the hell..." she began.

"We've got to go. Run," he commanded, and the sprinted to the exit. 

He let Trinity go first, but as she disappeared into the phone a new series of explosions came up through the sidewalk, nearly tracing their exact steps. As they approached the phone, Neo began to get nervous. He tried to make the Matrix appear in code again so he could see what was happening, but the explosions continued to come in their full glory. "Get me out, Tank," he muttered just as the phone began to ring.

"I need to know what the hell is going on here," bellowed Morpheus as he frantically scanned the monitors. "What just happened in there?"

"Just a second, sir," muttered Circuit, who was trying to figure out how to release the seat restraints and spikes from the still-plugged-in Trinity and Neo. 

"Don't look at me," said Tank, just as confused by what had happened as his captain. He took the last few auto-saved moments of their visit into the Matrix and replayed them on a separate screen, searching for abnormalities. 

Circuit managed to unplug Trinity and quickly moved to get Neo. The second-in-command sat up in her chair, numb, as Morpheus moved to her side to check her ankle.

"How did you do that?" asked the new medic. "I watched you. You _changed_ her code...healed her!"

"I don't know," replied Neo, still grimacing from the data spike removal. "I just did." He left his chair and moved to Trinity's side. "You okay?"

Her clear blue eyes met his. "Thank you," she mouthed.

"Neo," Morpheus interrupted, "what happened in there?"

"Don't know. All of a sudden the ground just rocked beneath our feet. Like we stepped on a landmine or something."

"Found it!" exclaimed Tank. Their attention turned to the screens. "Here's their last five minutes. See this?" He pointed to a small, simple string of code. "Here's our culprit."

"What is it?" asked Circuit, peering in closer to get a better look.

Neo studied it carefully. "Looks like a virus," he said at last.

"That's exactly what it is," explained Tank. "I've seen it plenty of times before. It's short and not very complex. It's a search string, really. Its task is simple. It finds something, and once it finds it, it appears to set off some type of displacement in the code around it. Essentially, it makes a little explosion in the Matrix around whatever it is it's found."

"Well, what was it looking for?" asked Morpheus, having seen similar mini-destruct devices before. 

Tank stretched his hands out in front of him, popping his knuckles. "That's what I can't figure out. "It's never bothered us before. You know, they leave us alone, we leave them alone. It's like the machines' housekeeper, fixing broken code and the like. Cleans up abnormalities in the Matrix, or something. It's just one of those things we kind of overlook."

"Well, that's the kind of thing that's going to get one of us killed," said Morpheus, obviously displeased that they had not investigated something like this earlier. He would most definitely have to Zion about it, and more than likely Neo's inability to stop it would be the subject of much controversy.

Later that night, in the darkness of their Zion cabin, Neo flinched in his sleep. He was dreaming about what had happened in the Matrix that day; the mysterious explosions, Trinity's ankle, and how he had fixed it. He dreamed it all again in slow motion, over and over, as if he'd missed something the first time and his mind was making him watch it again and again until he realized what it was.

Each time around he studied the scene differently, but the panic he'd felt continued to grow, and he felt that something seriously wrong would happen if he didn't get what it was he was supposed to understand. 

Trinity rolled over in her sleep, and Neo, as he was now accustomed to doing, rolled with her and spooned her from behind. He snaked his arm around her waist, his hand coming to rest on her stomach.

Again the dream repeated, again and again until he forced himself out of sleep with a start. Shaking and covered with sweat, Neo tried to calm himself down. He knew that something about the situation was more than unusual. Wrapping himself closer to Trinity, he tried to relax and think about how comfortable it felt to hold her. He tugged her thin tank top up to touch her stomach and began to draw lazy circles around her bellybutton.

And then it hit him.

He replayed the scene in his mind a final time, this time concentrating on Trinity. As soon as he looked at her code he could see why he'd missed it before. Buried deep within the complicated code that was Trinity, was something else. Barely visible, a tiny pale blue light twinkled within her abdomen.

She was pregnant.

His eyes snapped open, instantly. 

"Trinity, wake up."

"Hmmm..." she mumbled, rolling over. "Neo, it's the middle of the night..."

"Trinity, when did you have your last period?"

"I've never had my period," she explained sleepily. "I was born inside the Matrix, remember?"

"So? What do you mean?"

"We're sterile. I can't have kids, Neo, that's all. None of us can. Didn't Morpheus tell you?"

He was silent. "I don't believe it," he said softly.

"Neo," she began, shaking off sleep and sitting up, "what's on your mind?"

"I think you're pregnant," he said with a soft smile.

"I'm not, believe me," she replied with a soft chuckle.

"Trinity, I really think..."

"Neo, it's impossible. I would love to have children, but it's simply impossible..."

"Trinity, listen to me," he began, gathering her in his arms, his excitement growing. "Today, when I healed your leg, I saw something. Something that I couldn't place at first, but I remembered what it was. There's something there, inside of you..."

"Neo, there's nothing there," she said, this time more firmly. "You didn't see anything, it's impossible..."

"Why don't you believe me?" he interrupted her, his voice sounding more angry than he meant it to.

"Why don't you believe _me_?" she spat back. "You don't think this is already painful enough for me to deal with? Shit, we've talked about this. Do you just want to go around breaking all the rules? You want to sit down and raise kids? Neo, it's common knowledge. We _can't_ have children."

She instantly regretted her words as she felt him relax his usually comforting grip.

"God, Neo, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to... I just can't get my hopes up...only to be let down."

"Never mind. Go back to sleep."

Trinity apologized again, and waited for Neo to curl into her side and fall back asleep. 

He never did. 

Eventually the tears rose up and spilled out of her eyes. She placed her hand over her stomach, wondering if there was any possible way Neo could be right.


	3. Part III

bigone3verson2

Part III

A/N: The plot, it thickens, like a good soup. Thanks again to Centaur, well, because, plot is good. The new characters are ours. Z. is the name of my step-uncle's daughter's son. I'm for real. Enjoy. Part IV won't be too far behind, we hope.

______________________________________________________________________________________

Trinity slept poorly, plagued with bad dreams and cold. Neo offered little heat; he remained flat on his back the whole night, rigid and angry. Later in the day she would wonder if he had slept at all. She didn't feel him leave in the morning, and missed breakfast. She was more fatigued than usual, most likely because she felt horrible about being so trite with Neo the previous night.

Her search for him was short-lived; he, Tank, and Morpheus were most likely off together. Trinity was heading back to their cabin when she literally ran into Circuit coming out of a detox chamber.

"Oh, geez, I'm sorry," she said before glancing up, her voice echoing in the hallway. 

"It's me. Trinity."

"Hi!," said Circuit, one hand rearranging her clipboard and papers that had nearly fallen.

"Back to detoxing?" Trinity asked, curious as to why she wasn't in training to come aboard as a new crewmemeber. Circuit held up a urine sample with the other hand to respond.

"I'm beginning to hate this," she said, turning to accompany Trinity back to her room. "Same old shit, different piss." She looked hard at Trinity. "This may be really rude," she said softly, "but you look like shit. Are you okay?"

Trinity looked down into the medic's eyes and saw true concern there. It was enough. "When are you off?" 

***

"Honestly, I don't know," said Circuit, breathing into her tea. "It would be exciting, definitely. But I'm only twenty-two, a bit inexperienced, don't you think?"

"If I thought so I wouldn't be asking you," Trinity replied with a smile.

The blonde thought hard, chewing on her lip as she did so. "Well, shit," she said at last, "I'd be honored. Have you checked this with the man in charge and all that?"

"Don't need to. It was kinda scary there yesterday. You did well. We were impressed."

Circuit took a deep swallow of tea. "That was amazing what he did," she said slowly, speaking of Neo. Trinity turned away, suddenly solemn. "Oh. Maybe we shouldn't talk about that..." continued Circuit, mad that she'd brought it up.

"No, that's okay." Trinity turned back to meet her eyes. She studied the young doctor. How different she looked now than from yesterday: dirty, weak and clumsy on the ship, now, home and in her element, wearing clean scrubs, blonde hair shining. Trinity liked her both ways, but after watching Circuit on the Neb, seeing her back in medical scrubs seemed unfitting. Now her elfin features were drawn together in concern, waiting for Trinity to continue. Something about her made her keep going. "Neo thinks I'm pregnant," she said softly.

Circuit shook her head slowly. "You can't be. That's impossible. I wouldn't even test you...that's cruel."

Trinity exhaled. "I know..."

"...but..." Circuit implored, her eyebrows questioning.

Trinity's voice wavered as she spoke. "There's something you're going to find out about Neo, Circuit, and this is what scares me. With Neo, there _is no impossible_."

"I can test you if you'd like me to," said Circut, her voice small. "But I..."

Trinity's eyes answered before she could. "Please..."

***

Circuit was quite sure she was wrong. She even redid the test to make sure. She kept her face as expressionless as she could until the third test came out the same.

She lined up the tests and stared at them for awhile, before turning to Trinity. "You'd better find Neo," was all that she could say.

***

In the weeks that followed, Neo realized that he had an affinity for rooftops. He wondered if it had something to do with a subconscious inferiority complex, something still nagging at him from his past. Perhaps he was simply happy to have conquered his fear of heights. Whatever it was, he found himself, more than often, sitting with his back against a cooling vent and simply thinking. For hours at a time, time passed by so quickly here.

Today the sun was shining in the Matrix and Neo felt uncomfortably alone. Morpheus had some business to do, and Neo went along to protect Morpheus. Not that Morpheus needed any protection. The agents had left them pretty much alone since the showdown in Heart o' the City. That made Neo nervous, the silence most likely meant that they were out there, scheming. 

Trinity refused to come with him, and that worried Neo too. Shortly after her last trip to the Matrix and the discovery of her pregnancy, they had figured out what caused the explosions that resulted in her broken ankle. She'd changed with the pregnancy, growing increasingly insecure and worrisome. Even after they discovered the cause of the explosions she refused to go back into the Matrix.

Neo smiled, remembering the day that they finally figured it out. The new girl, Circuit, was the one who actually cracked it. She invited them all to the medical school to show them the fruit of her research. "See," she'd said, her voice giddy, delighted that she could finally contribute, "there's Neo, right? He and Trinity are here, here, and here." She pointed to the screens with a slender finger. "Now your search string, here, runs over Neo once, twice, the third time here, see, and does nothing. But it hits Trinity once, here, and _boom_ the explosions start here. Notice that they're not natural, like seismic activity or anything, which looks like _this_," she pushed a button and brought up the codes for earthquakes, exploding gasses, and other earthly abnormalities. "Obviously, the search string found what it was programmed to find," she paused for drama, waiting for the others to catch on. They didn't. "We all know what that is," she hinted with a big grin. "The baby!?" she said, raising her hands in exasperation. "The string looks for pregnancy and once it finds it, it triggers another program, _here, _that works to destroy it. Hence the explosions."

"That's not a very effective way to kill a baby," Tank had said to the screens. "If they were smart, they'd..."

Morpheus had cut him off, not wanting to think of all the dire ways the machines could try and kill Trinity's miracle child. "That's excellent work, Circuit," he said to the young doctor. Neo knew he was very impressed that a person who knew so little about Matrix codes and programming had put in enough hours to figure it out. He and Tank had dismissed it as an anomaly after it never happened again. Then again, Trinity hadn't returned to the Matrix.

Shortly after Circuit's discovery, they set to work on a program that would mask Trinity's pregnancy from the machines. It was a relatively easy task, and Morpheus was pleased that Circuit was able to help by informing them what hormones to disguise. She had begun to carry around a five-pound book entitled "Human Structure and Function as Represented by Matrix Code" and studied freeze-frame downloads of the crew's RSI's for reference. Neo liked her tenacity and was happy to see that Trinity had already asked her to joint the crew. She was no Dozer, but her skills would prove to be more than useful, and her growing friendship with Trinity was more than Neo could have asked for.

After they'd found a way to get Trinity back into the Matrix and out of harm's way, however, she wanted nothing to do with the Matrix whatsoever. Morpheus was eager to rebuild the crew, but wary of pushing Trinity into something she was this uncomfortable with. He gave her a month before they went out on a recruiting mission, but it wasn't enough. Just before plugging her in, Trinity snapped and demanded to be let out of her chair. She wasn't going in, and no amount of coaxing from Neo could convince her.

Now, five months later, she'd all but cloistered herself in Zion, not even wanting to accompany the crew on their weekly trips to broadcast depth. Neo fought to be patient with her, especially now that she was adamant that he not go into the Matrix either. It seemed like the more she didn't want him to go in, the more he found it necessary to sit immersed in it for hours. 

He watched the sky today, trying to push the war and the machines and all the other evils of the Matrix out of his mind. There was one more close to home to worry about right now, with Trinity, his Trinity.

The answer was there, somewhere very close to him.

He lay back on the concrete to think. Perhaps if he just stayed here long enough it would come to him.

***

Trinity exhaled, trying to relax as Circuit covered her swollen belly with a cold, pink gel. She closed her eyes and waited for the soft swish of the ultrasound to fill her ears. A slight smile crossed the doctor's face as she scanned the monitor, then faded.

"Still no progress," Circuit murmured softly, switching off the ultrasound and wiping Trinity's stomach with a warm, damp cloth. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and spilled over to run hotly down her cheeks.

"I don't know what to tell you," Circuit continued. "I've delivered hundreds of free-borns, but you are different. This child is..."

"Special," Trinity finished for her, her voice cracking.

"More than that. I'm still dumbfounded as to how you conceived. Your ovaries have never released eggs; you still contain the same amount as you did when you were born."

"I guess one was enough."

"The chances of ovulation after this many years are next to nothing. The fact that you did ovulate is amazing; the fact that you conceived is a miracle. This child may be the product of the only egg you ever release."

Circuit finished cleaning Trinity's stomach and gently pulled her shirt back over the slight swell of her abdomen. Judging the child's age was a task in and of itself, since Trinity, like all other matrix-borns, was amenorrheic. Trinity's first ultrasound proved that the child was much more developed, hence older, than they had originally predicted. At six months along she should have had more than this tiny swell; the child was severely small.

Trinity wiped the tears with the back of her hand. "What's wrong with it?" she asked, sitting up.

The doctor paused. "I honestly don't know. Genetic material from your amniocentesis indicates that there are no signs of disease, and it's DNA isn't flawed in any way. In fact, it seems genetically close to perfect. A true blend of you and Neo."

Trinity nodded. 

"I'm going to do all I can," assured Circuit, "but this isn't going to be an easy ride. The way things look now, your child is in for a serious struggle."

Sighing, Trinity rubbed her belly and tried to keep from crying. "The way you smiled at first made me hope that the news was good," she said softly.

Circuit smiled again, and placed her hand on her patient's shoulder. "It is. You're gonna have a girl."

***

Neo returned to find their cabin dark. For an instant he thought Trinity may be out, but he sensed her presence and immediately knew things didn't go well with her checkup. He moved quietly to the bunk and found her curled tightly around herself.

"You okay?" he asked, rubbing his hand over her back.

"Where have you been? You've been gone all day and I couldn't find anyone who knew where you went."

"Took the Neb out for a spin."

"Why?"

He didn't answer. "How are you?" he asked instead.

"I'm okay. Circuit doesn't think she's going to make it," she added after a pause, her voice cracking. "No growth since last month."

"She?" asked Neo, smiling in the dark. "We're going to have a girl?"

Trinity sputtered a cough and sat up to hug her partner. "I'm so scared," she whispered. "I don't want to lose this baby."

"You won't, Trin. She'll be just fine. I just..."

"Just what?"

"There's something not right here," he explained, laying her back onto the bed and curling to her side. "I can't seem to put my finger on it yet, but there's something wrong with this whole situation."

"Besides for the fact that I technically shouldn't be pregnant?"

"No... I can't explain it. There's just something that needs to be done. I just haven't figured out what it is yet."

She almost dared to ask the question. "Have you been in the Matrix?"

He didn't even attempt to lie to her. "Yes," came the one-word answer.

"Neo, I thought we'd discussed this..."

"There hasn't been any attempt to attack me by the agents in the last four months. I'm really not worried about being there."

"But _I'm_ worried about you being there. What if something happened and I lost you. I can't do this alone! I can barely do it by myself!"

"I know."

"What are you doing in there, anyway?" she asked vehemently.

"Looking for a new crew."

She sighed, knowing he wasn't telling the truth. "You're searching without the second in command?" she asked sarcastically.

"I thought you wanted to stay here, Trinity. Where it's safe, where there's medical staff..."

"I don't know what I want!"

"I'm sorry," he mumbled.

"Dont' be sorry, Neo," she began, running her fingers through her hair. "I'm...I just don't know what's wrong with me. I don't want to be there....it doesn't feel safe there...but I don't want to be here... I feel so trapped. I'm no housewife, Neo, I'm a resistance leader. I guess either way I'm going to have to sit around and wait for her my child to die..."

"Don't say that. I'm not going to let that happen."

"There's nothing we can do..."

"Yes, there is. I'm working on it."

She furrowed her eyebrows, trying to understand. "You think you can save her," she began slowly, her mind beginning to merge with her partner's. "The answer is in the Matrix?"

Neo sighed, knowing that the Matrix still held locks that he didn't know how to open. "Yes, it is."

"What do you do while you're there?" she asked, and Neo could feel a curiosity slip back into her voice; yes, she did miss the Matrix.

"I don't do anything but watch. And think. And look at all those people who are completely oblivious. There are thousands. Millions. How are we going to free them all?"

"I don't think we can. Most of them couldn't accept the truth. Besides, the planet is literally inhabitable. Neo, you know this."

"So what happens to all the rest? They die?"

"Or they stay plugged, and you manage to keep them believing the lie..."

"That isn't' right. So what? We just wait for them all to die? Something's eating at me, Trinity. So far, we've fought the war inside the Matrix. Eventually, the Matrix will no longer exist and a new war will begin here."

"I don't get it."

"You see, a person can be unplugged by us -- or by them. Think about this. We leave them all in the power plant to live out their lives. Like you and me, they are still part machine; still capable of being controlled. Like bees. It would only take one machine to develop their energy queens and then unplug the drones; turn them against humankind. Eventually they'll find a way to live entirely inside a human body. The species we call human will disappear. We can destroy their technology, the way they prefer to live. But when their complete existence is at risk, I'm guessing it will be better to be part human than cease to be."

He paused, taking a deep breath. "You know what really bothers me, Trinity? That _I'm_ not entirely human. That we aren't like most of the other people here. That we aren't even going to be like our child. That we alone control the fate of the human species." He turned to her, his voice shaking. "You know what kind of power that is? Power to control the fate of the world? Essentially, Trin, we have in our hands the lives of thousands of people like us. And I think we're going to have to make a choice as to who lives and who dies. I don't know if I can deal with that. I would be worse than Hitler.

"Please don't worry," he continued, whispering, "that I'm going to do anything without thoroughly talking it over with everyone first. Not only you and Morpheus, but everyone else in Zion. But the power to know I could...it takes my breath away. I've been in the Matrix a lot, I know. But it's the only place I can really...think."

"Because you are a part of it..." she murmured, tracing his head jack with her fingertips.

He cringed. "Yeah. But it scares me, too. Not just 'cause of the power trip, but because every time I go in I feel like I'm on something, some fucked up crazy shit. I crave it. It's like the Matrix is trying to make me a part of it; suck me in until I blend in with the mesh of it. It sounds so Zen, but it's like becoming one with myself, like half of me is still there. And the scary thing is, Trin, is that I like that feeling. And that horrifies me."

"Why do you like it, Neo?"

"Because there I am the One. There I don't have to run for my life. There, I can protect you. But here, I'm just me."

"I told you once that the Matrix cannot tell you who you are. When are you going to start believing that?"

"The Matrix may not be able to tell you who you are, but for us, Trin, _it is part of who we are_." He sighed heavily. "It's time for you to come back. I need you there."

She nodded her head in affirmation, and against her better judgment, said, "I know."

***

Circuit's first real dinner aboard the Neb was short and tense. She was happy to be a part of the crew, but things between Neo and Trinity had been increasingly bitter over the past weeks and tonight it was at a head. Several days earlier, when she and Trinity met with Morpheus, Trinity proclaimed that their time in Zion was up and that it was time to leave. Circuit watched Morpheus as he studied Trinity carefully; he had told Circuit during one of her training sessions how many resistance fighters could never retire because the separation from the false reality of the Matrix was similar to drug withdrawal. Day-trips to broadcast depth were a waste of fuel anyway, and Zion had become a too-long vacation for them all. They all wanted to help get Trinity through her pregnancy in a comforting environment, and for her, the Neb was about as homey as it got.

Trinity had helped her unpack and set up her cabin, and for a few moments Trinity laughed and joked as if she hadn't a care in the world. Circuit liked Trinity a lot; their beginning friendship was actually what convinced her to join the crew to begin with. Although Trinity was a bit older than she was, they shared a friendship that would eventually blossom into something like sisterhood. Circuit had no sister, or family for that matter, and she felt a certain wholeness aboard the Neb, even in these trying times.

They were all tired now, after the day of unpacking and getting the ship ready to depart. The four of them, Neo, Trinity, Morpheus, and Circuit, sat around the metal table sharing their first protein-slop meal together. Tank was in the Core, finishing up a trace on a potential candidate. He was eager to find another who could serve as an operator during his off-duty hours. 

"I'm going to see the Oracle tonight," announced Neo, breaking their silence. Morpheus and Circuit raised their heads, Trinity continued playing with her spork. "Tired of figuring it out yourself?" asked Morpheus as he crossed the mess hall to put his bowl in the sink.

"That's not at all funny," mumbled Neo.

"I did not mean it to be," replied Morpheus.

Trinity's spork clunked again against the side of the metal dish. She hadn't eaten a thing.

Circuit grimaced. "So," she began, trying to break the opressivness that had been hanging in the air for the past few hours, "what do you do for fun around here?"

Neo suddenly got up and left. Trinity sat stone-like for a few moments before she got up to follow him. Her spork clanged loudly as it hit the table.

Morpheus glanced at his new free-born crewmember, trying to muster a smile. "Want to see your ER, doc?"

***

Trinity followed the sound of Neo's boots up the metal stairs and to the core.

"You didn't say you were going now," she called after him.

"Go back and eat something, Trinity," he said over his shoulder. 

"Neo..." she caught up with him. "You've got to stop torturing yourself..."

"And you've got to eat, damnit!"

Her blue eyes narrowed into slits as she faced his back. "Turn around. Turn around and look at me."

He slowly turned around, blinking the tears out of his eyes.

"What is the matter with you, Neo? This is not your fault!"

He scanned her thin body before he broke down and cried. "I'm going to figure it out, I promise you Trin. I promise you..."

"Neo," she bit her lip, trying to think of the right words. "I know you're doing all you can. Maybe we just have to let it go."

"I can't do that," he mumbled into her shoulder. "Look at you! I'm not even supposed to be able to hug you..." He pressed himself against her, painfully aware that her belly wasn't a healthy round.

She held him there in the corridor, waiting for his sobs to reside and for her to choke down her own. After awhile they wiped each other's eyes and headed hand-in-hand to the core, where they found Tank waiting.

"Where to now?" he asked solemnly.

"My therapist," said Neo and sat down in his chair. 

"I still love you," Trinity whispered into his ear as she adjusted the head restraint. "We're going to get through this." 

"I know. I'm going to figure this out," he said with new determination. "Trust me."

She smiled at him and kissed his forehead before inserting the plug. "I do, Neo," she thought. "I do." 

***

A neatly-dressed Neo gingerly stepped into the room, a bit embarrassed to see the Oracle tucked into bed. A table tray lay balanced on her lap; an extinguished cigarette sat perched in the fingers of a seventies diner-style holder. 

"I'm glad to see you, Neo," she said in her velvet voice as she put down an outdated Readers Digest.

"I hope you're doing well," he replied, coming to take a seat next to her bed. 

"Oh, these old bones are a-creakin' these days," she drawled. "These joints could use a good hot bath and a massage. But I'm sure you don't want to hear about that."

Neo smiled weakly; she could still read his thoughts.

"You've come about your daughter." He nodded. "She's going to be just fine, Neo. You see, I'm on my way out. We all know that. You've done a good job, kiddo. This place is falling to ruins."

"You're dying?" It was more of a statement than a question.

"Don't look so surprised!" she chuckled. "You think you're gonna unplug me after all these years? I don't think so!" She coughed, then reached to re-light her cigarette. "They say I shouldn't smoke these things," she smiled, "but what's the point now? Who needs me once the Matrix is destroyed?"

"But you can't die," sputtered Neo, suddenly feeling very emotionally attached to this woman who has given guidance to so many. "The people of Zion need you. We need you." 

She let out a great laugh. "Oh, you haven't figured this out yet? I know you haven't. Being the Oracle is an easy job. Even a _child_ could do it." Her eyes sparkled. "You're such a sweetheart, Neo, what a good daddy you're going to make. I know you'll save her in time."

"How do I save her?" he asked desperately, trying hard not to become angry.

"You're looking for an answer in the Matrix, Neo. Here, you feel at home. Here, you are the One. And yes, kiddo, you can fly. Scare a mighty amount of people with that one. But the answer you seek is not with me."

"But my daughter..."

"You're going to have to see through this, Neo. I can't tell you the answer."

"I figured that," he replied with a sad smile.

"Look to your child, my friend. She has the answers." The Oracle took one last drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out. "There," she said, her hands trembling, "that was my last one."

***

"You want out yet?" asked Tank curiously.

"Nope."

"You're doing it again, buddy. Freaks us all out. Why don't you come back here and zone out?"

Neo was silent.

"Any good news from the Oracle?"

"I don't know yet. I never understand the shit she tells me."

"Don't worry, no one ever does."

"I'll call you when I'm ready," Neo assured him before clicking his phone shut. He knew Morpheus and Tank were concerned that he was spending so much time in the Matrix; it was easier explaining it to Trinity. 

He currently sat on the roof of his old place of employment, thinking. It was his new favorite place; he often ended up sitting on the ledge for hours, just watching the traffic and the pigeons that occasionally landed by him. He found it odd that no copper top ever realized he was there...so many people so caught up in their own insignificant crises that they never bother to look up, to the sky, the sun, or a person who was teetering on the edge of a twenty-three story building.

He knew the answer was here, in the Matrix. He had hoped he could get it from the Oracle. He knew she'd shown him the answer. Now it was up to him to figure it out.

Her foretelling of her own death had surprised him; he barely even realized that the Oracle was a copper top, a poor deteriorating woman trapped within the dark confines of the fields. Too old to pull out, too valuable to let die. The Oracle was an important part in Zion society; her words guided generations. She was consulted on every decision, the center of the resistance, a bridge between the two worlds. 

Her death would stun the free world.

She had said that the resistance was doing a good job; the Matrix was unstable. Not necessarily crumbling, but shaken. That was his intent. Living side-by-side with the AI was much more probable than wiping them out. For the most part human existence was just as dependent on them as they were on humans; they were symbioants. Zionists were a different breed all together, the remainder of a race and culture long forgotten. Human life was redefined, resistance fighters and city dwellers, unplugged and free-born. He realized early into their say in Zion that Morpheus and Trinity were more at home on the Neb than they were in the city. Tank could go either way.

He thought about himself and where he felt most comfortable, only to realize that the only place that felt like home was the Matrix. So, it wasn't real. But it was where he lived his life, where he had control. He lacked Trinity's confidence and Morpheus' wisdom; his talent was only useful in the place he was desperately trying to destroy. He sometimes wondered what his life would be like once it was gone, and then quickly pushed that thought aside and concentrated on what did make him happy.

Trinity. And his unborn daughter.

__

Look to your child... Her words echoed in his ears again. 

And then it clicked.

He pushed the buttons on his phone furiously.

"Tank, send in Trinity."

***

The minutes passed by as Neo paced back and forth across the roof. 

Then he felt her enter; an instant later she appeared a few feet away from him on the roof.

"I forgot how much I miss this place," she said, taking in her surroundings. 

"You okay?"

"A bit nervous, but yeah, okay."

"Good. Now give me your hands, Trin. I don't want you in here too long."

She inhaled, taking in the Matrix. "I can see what you mean about intoxicating."

He smiled at her, happy to see the burden temporarily lifted.

"Did you see the Oracle?" she asked. "Did she tell you what's wrong with the baby?"

"Well, not directly. I have a hunch. Give me your hands." She obeyed, entwining her fingers with his. "I love you," he whispered, then directed her to close her eyes. Slowly the tingle she'd felt the time before crept up her fingertips from his palms to hers, a slow metamorphosis as Neo worked his magic.

"You don't have to look if it makes you dizzy, okay?" Neo instructed her, his voice carrying an edge of anticipation. "I have a theory about what's happening."

"What is it?"

"I think..." he began as he studied the small blue glob inside her abdomen, "that out daughter will let us know what's happening to her."

"How's that?"

"The Oracle said to look to her. I think she meant literally."

Trinity snorted lightly. "I feel like I'm being dissected."

Neo didn't answer her. He focused on the blue light, amazed how it was completely independent from the rest of Trinity's code. He could see the placenta, a familiar Matrix green, fuse with the umbilical cord and gradually change to azure blue. It was strange to say the least; it fascinated him.

"Glad you're in code, 'cause I sure as hell am no doctor" he managed to say as he struggled to enlarge her image and zoom in to where he could see the child.

"What are you doing?" she asked. "Feels strange."

"Keep you're eyes closed. I'm enlarging you."

"Thanks."

Trinity concentrated on the soft breeze sweeping over the top of the building when she heard Neo mutter, "oh, shit."

"What is it?"

"It looks like... your body is attacking the baby."

"_What?_"

"Hold on a second, okay? Keep your eyes closed. You don't want to see yourself right now. I don't even know if you could see, anyway. You're still here but, well, you're code's a bit...askew. I pulled you apart."

"Really?" The green tangle that was now Trinity sounded interested in seeing Neo's dirty work. 

"I'm serious, Trin. You'll get sick."

"Tell me what you see."

He studied the attackers carefully. It wasn't Matrix code. It was something he'd never seen before. But it was definitely there. Tiny pieces of foreign code, swarming around the fetus, like ants on a fallen apple. The child itself was unscathed, to his relief, but the umbilical cord was nearly clogged with them. 

He focused his energy on the attackers, hoping to delete them, with no avail. They were simply an image of what was happening to her real body back on the ship. After a few minutes, he gave up and released his control of her RSI. The code instantly knit itself back together.

"What did you find?" she asked cautiously, after Neo informed her that she was back in one piece. 

"I honestly don't know. It's...I don't know. But the umbilical cord looks nearly clogged with code..."

"What kind of code?" she asked frantically. "Circuit says that there's plenty of oxygen reaching her, so it can't be blood..."

"It's not your body attacking her. I think it's something else."

"Like what?"

Neo searched her concerned eyes, not knowing what his answer would mean. He took a deep breath. "Something definitely not human."

***

The understaffed crew of the Neb gathered around Tank's operating station and peered curiously at freeze-frame images of Trinity's last few moments in the Matrix.

"I see it, I see it!" whispered Circuit, her face working with doctorly concern.

Tank's sentiments were with much less tact: "Holy fuck, you weren't lying, man. There it is."

"Mmm," came Morpheus' usual reply.

"There's my guts, on display," mumbled Trinity, watching her crewmates pointing and gawking at her displayed RSI. "How can you see anything in that mess, Neo?"

"Don't know. I just can."

"What is it?" asked Morpheus, his baritone voice concerned.

"I have no clue," replied Neo, rubbing his hand over his short hair. "But I can count on who does."

"The Oracle?" asked Circuit, curious as to how Neo's audience went.

"No," replied Neo softly. "Um, I think you guys better sit down for this."

Suddenly struck with an air of seriousness, they all sat.

"The Oracle is dying," said Neo numbly. "She said that there isn't a need for her anymore now that the Matrix will surely be destroyed."

"The Matrix is killing her?" Morpheus asked, quietly.

"I don't think so," replied Neo, picking at the sleeve of his sweater. "She would have been gone long before now if they wanted her dead. I think she just knows her time is up."

"She didn't give you any answers?"

"Well, yes and no. She told me to look to my child, which I did, and found whatever that is inside Trinity."

"And you said you know who can tell you what it is?" probed Morpheus.

Neo suddenly looked very uncomfortable. He turned to his partner. "Trinity, you're not going to like this, but it's the only way that I'm going to find the information I need."

She nodded, acknowledging that the fight for her child wouldn't be easy. "What do you need to do?"

"Find an agent."

She paused, turning the information over in her mind. "Oh my God." Her face turned a very pale shade of green. "Whatever is in me...is machine?"

Neo nodded, frowning. "Is that so hard to believe? You know that we're a sort of...hybrid."

"Oh, God," she murmured, suddenly feeling nauseous. "Oh, my God."

Morpheus nodded silently, giving Neo the go-ahead. He turned then to Trinity. "Are you okay with this?"

"Yes." She inhaled, and Neo could see the spark he thought she'd lost creep back, becoming visible on her face. "But I'm coming in, too. I would like to see her one last time."

***

It took Neo three days to pick his target before they went in, an agent who was routinely stationed a few blocks from the Oracle, but whose track record of violence was lackluster as far as agents go. They went in together, Neo sharing an unspoken moment with Trinity before entrusting her over to Morpheus. 

The captain insisted that Trinity see the Oracle first; he waited in the vestibule while she made her way to the living room. It was empty save for the Oracle and her attendant.

"Hullo, Trinity."

The Oracle bottle-feeding a small child and rocking gently in a creaky rocking chair that was one size too small for her. It was a poignant image; Trinity quickly dismissed the thought that the Oracle may be mocking her.

"Where are your kids?" she asked, noticing the absence of the Oracle's usual trainees.

"Oh, child, my time as the Oracle is up. Caput. The people here will no longer need a guide, and now that we have found the One, there isn't much more for me to do with these youngsters. This here's one of my great-great grand babies. Tell me, Trinity, do you still keep your faith?"

"Yes."

"Than think of it this way. The good lord only has so many gifts, I guess. This particular one only one person can hang on to at one time."

"The gift of prophesy?"

"Prophesy, schmraphesy. Do you remember what Morpheus told you about me?"

"Of course. That you are a guide."

"Bingo. A guide. These people no longer need a guide. We will no longer need to rely on the Matrix for anything."

Trinity thought for a long while before speaking. "Can Neo take your place?"

The Oracle let out a hearty laugh. "God, child, no! He couldn't bake a decent oatmeal cookie if he wanted to."

Trinity smiled.

"But really, child, Neo has one purpose. You have another. Neo couldn't possibly hold my duties. Besides, there is already a person lined up for that job."

"Who?"

"That boy didn't tell you?" asked the Oracle, stifling a cough so as not to disturb the child.

"Tell me what?"

The Oracle looked at Trinity long and hard, trying to decide if the news was good or bad. She finally decided it deserved a smile. "If she survives," she began, her face wrinkling into deep chocolate creases, "the child you hold in your belly will be the next Oracle. A new leader...for a new people."

Trinity's eyes widened in shock. "How can that be?"

"Oh, stop wondering _how_ and start wondering _why_. Have you ever thought about duality, Trinity?"

"You mean, like _two_? Sure. We talk about that all the time, actually. The mirror, you know. The Matrix as the looking glass; perceived versus real, and how we are both, together, yet separate."

"Yes, you are correct." She paused to take the empty bottle from the child's still-sucking mouth, placed it on the table, then handed the child to a waiting attendant. "But have you ever considered that there may be two of you, standing side by side in time, looking into two mirrors?"

Trinity wrinkled her brow. "No, I don't believe I've ever thought about that...I don't really think it is possible."

"Your soul, honey. You have an old soul. Maybe older than mine." She paused, shifted in the chair, and continued. "How did you feel when you first met Neo?"

"Um...happy, I guess?"

"No, child, how did you really _feel._"

The younger woman searched her heart before finding the answer. "Like I'd come home, like I'd completed something, like I'd found something lost."

The Oracle nodded. "That's what I thought."

The baby the Oracle had been holding squalled, and she motioned for her attendant to give the child to Trinity. She awkwardly embraced it, holding it to her chest.

"Does this seem familiar, like you've come home?" asked the Oracle.

"No. This is new." Trinity smiled at the baby. The Oracle's words sank deep. "Is my child going to be...you?" she asked.

The Oracle shook her head, smiling. "No, your child is brand spankin' new. A fresh start, a new soul. But I can tell your brain is working now, and that's exactly where I wanted you to go." 

Trinity nodded.

"I know you've been apprehensive about visiting the Matrix lately," continued the Oracle, "and there's good reason for that. Your last few trips in have been less than a walk in the park. I promise you that it will get much easier, and you can continue to do what you do best."

"But..."

"But there's one more thing you need to see today, and it will probably be a little unnerving for you. Just know this: you are not in danger, and neither is Neo."

"What do I have to do?"

"It's time to look into the mirror, Trinity. I hope you can understand what you're going to see."

***

Morpheus and Trinity walked in silence to the exit. He held the phone to her, she shook her head. "I'm waiting for Neo," she said. Morpheus nodded, and dissapeared into the reciever. The Oracle's words rang and echoed in her head as she replaced the reciever on the cradle. The intant they connected the phone booth was reduced to nothing but shards of glass and twisted metal.

***

"Hello, Mr. Anderson."

"Still can't figure out my name yet, Agent..."

"Agent Adams. No, Mr. Anderson, I know the name you preferred to be called. I just still cannot bring myself to address your kind with that type of familiarity."

"Do you have a first name, Adams?"

"It is Agent."

"Very original," nodded Neo. 

"Let us skip these commonalties, Mr. Anderson. I really should be elsewhere, but be it as I have no choice, I suppose I should cooperate with you." He wriggled against invisible bonds. "Why have detained me?"

"You mean you don't know?" Neo smiled, leaning in closer to his adversary. "I want to know why my child is dying."

"You have conceived a child?" asked Adams, incredulously. "That isn't possible."

"It also 'isn't possible' for a human to be detaining you, either," Neo spat back.

"You do not know why it is dying," replied Agent Smith calmly.

"Well, obviously her body is attacking the child, and for reasons that have nothing to do with normal human functioning." He leaned in even closer, knowing Adams probably liked humans no more than Smith. "And since she has a _fucking plug_ in her head, I figured you probably have something to do with it."

Adams' face began to distort with disgust. "Do not try to intimidate me, Mr. Anderson. I have a perfectly good understanding that we are equally matched."

Neo snorted, wishing that Adams knew that he could destroy him at any second. "You'll tell me how to save her?" he asked.

Agent Adams appeared to be thinking. He paused, assessing the situation, before removing his trying to remove his earpiece. He looked at Neo for permission, Neo granted him the movement. "Not without a bargain, Mr. Anderson," said the agent once he was free of his mechanical big brothers.

Neo smiled to himself, folded his arms across his chest, and as politely as he could, said, "Shoot."

"You are very well aware that many of us, including the late Agent Smith, are not as, _excited,_ as some of our other counterparts. Often, I feel like what you would call a slave. I assume this is why you chose me, Mr. Anderson. You must have realized that I am, like Smith, searching for a way to be through with my duty."

__

Just luck of the draw, thought Neo, glad that the machines thought he had the power to understand Agent motives. _Disgruntled A.I. Shit. Talk about playing God..._

"So I will offer you a deal," continued Adams, "that should satisfy your objective." Suddenly Adams looked uncomfortable. Neo's interest was instantly peaked; he didn't believe Agents had any emotions what so ever, much less the ability to feel stress or anxiety. "I would like a body," said the Agent softly, "that I can insert my program into. This lack of physical existence...well, I believe it bothers me. We are not supposed to need hosts anymore; we are engineered to jump from host to host. I, like many other agents I am aware of, would like to physically exist here, and to do that, I must have a permanent human host. I could carry out my so-called life without constantly being called on to take care of certain...interruptions. I am aware that your crew can disrupt your input/output signals for brief periods of time. If I knew the location, I would be able to insert myself during the disruption. I understand that you have the power to destroy me. Perhaps you could make it look like..." he paused, drawing it out in that melodramatic way Neo was beginning to hate..."an accident."

Neo watched the agent closely. _So their programming isn't perfect,_ he thought. _Smith wasn't the only one. How many more feel this way?_

"Your...partner...isn't entirely human," droned Adams. "She is _our_ child, if you could say such a thing. As are you, Mr. Anderson. What you have conceived is not affiliated with us in any way. We honestly didn't believe you could."

"Because you sterilized us."

"Of course. After a few decades of your kind freeing each other, we realized that your urge to...reproduce...could put us in jeopardy. Sterilization is a fairly easy process. We simply programmed you not to. Females never produce luteinizing hormone; males have tail-less sperm. It's not hard to do, _your _brain is programmable, thanks to us. You should have never conceived in the first place." He looked amused. "But we know the predictability of chaos, Mr. Anderson. Eventually there would be children. We simply added a 'back-up plan,' as you call it. Getting a Matrix-free female to self-abort is a complicated task, and can only be done while she is in the Matrix itself. Rather than waste our time, we developed an internal self-destruct virus that is triggered by the flux of pregnancy hormones. It simply doesn't provide the child much of an opportunity to grow. Obviously, our plan is working." Neo glared hard at the agent, trying to keep his anger under control. Agent Adams raised his eyebrows, continuing. "The only way to stop the virus from terminating the child is to upload an 'antidote'. 

Neo continued to stare at the agent, willing the Matrix code to appear. The agent's program sat still, completely surrounded, captured by Neo's bright green code. He peered deeper into the agent's programming, searching for something that would resembled an anti-virus. Just as he did with Trinity's ankle, he asked himself to locate the program. The agent's form continued to pulse, nothing changed. Then he realized it: the program wasn't in the Matrix.

"And let me guess, you don't have it on you," he muttered angrily. 

"Of course I don't," replied Adams, a slight smile twitching on the corners of his lips. "Do you honestly believe we would network something like that to the Matrix?"

"Where do I get it?"

"I would like an assurance that we have a deal."

Neo thought for a moment. "You realize," he began brain starting to work, "that wanting a physical body is a distinctively human trait?" Agent Adams frowned, and Neo studied it, wondering if they could possibly look remotely congenial. Perhaps they were truly unhappy. Neo supposed he would be too if he were modeled after a G-man with a hemmorid problem. "I don't think I can get you a body, but a RSI isn't out of the question. Would that suffice?"

Agent Adams frowned again, but nodded in the affirmative.

Neo held out his hand; Adams looked at it skeptically.

"Hey, Agent Adams, if you want to tool around the Matrix like a human, you'd better get used to making human promises."

Adams reconsidered and grasped Neo's hand tightly.

And for the first time in his existence he felt regret.

Neo held his hand tightly while he willed the Agent's program to erase itself, strand by strand. He quickly skimmed over the code, willing the location of the anti-virus to make itself visible. Eventually, after most of the code was unraveled, he found it. The barely visible, pale green characters revealed what Neo had predicted: the anti-virus was only kept in the mainframe.

__

You could have never been human, Neo thought as the last of the agent code disappeared and the regular green Matrix code filled in to take its place. 

***

Trinity had to blink a few times to make sure her eyes were open. They were, but from the darkness it didn't make a difference. The air was thick enough to taste and the space was black—black like the construct was white. She was lying on her back, and while she had no way of knowing whether or not the surface beneath her was the floor, if it was a table of some sort it too wide for outstretched arms to reach an edge.

By all logic, she should have been terrified, and she knew it. She wasn't, though. In fact, the way she felt at the moment was the closest thing she'd ever experienced to no emotion at all. Perhaps this program, whatever it was, lacked the code to describe emotion. It wasn't the Matrix anymore, she knew that. If it were, Neo would be there. She still wore her leathers, though—the same ones she'd been wearing before the explosion, chafing in all the same damn places. One hand came up to touch the opposite shoulder, where she had fallen, and fingers brushed a large bump on her upper arm. She winced.

__

Well, I can feel the pain. I guess that's something.

She brought her hand up to her face. The glasses were still there, apparently unharmed, resting straight and secure over the bridge of her nose. In several slow, broken, painful movements, she pulled them off and folded them up to fit in her pocket. The darkness was unchanging and unrelenting.

__

Get up, Trinity. Get up.

She braced one hand beneath her, shifting her weight onto her good arm and levering herself up. A knife of pain sliced the length of her spine, and something warm dripped onto the back of one of her fingers. Her other hand came up to touch her cheek, finding soft wetness just below her right eye. She didn't need to see it to know that it was blood.

She groaned.

Standing up fully was the hardest thing she had done in a long time; her knees didn't want to support her and her ankles threatened to buckle under her weight. She wanted to lean on something, but there was nothing there. Every cell of her body screamed for her to lay back down, but she knew that if she did she wouldn't be able to get back up again.

And suddenly, out of nowhere, the thought hit her—

__

My baby.

Her hand came to her stomach, but thanks to Circuit's careful camouflage, she couldn't tell. She had the same flat abdomen she'd had before the pregnancy. There was no way for her to know anything until she was out.

Trinity set her jaw. _Out. I have to get out_. She felt her pockets for her cell phone, pulled it out, and dialled Tank.

The call didn't connect.

The fear began to set in.

"Hello?" she called out into the black, not expecting an answer, but not seeing anything else to do. "Is there anybody here?" Her voice echoed off into the distance forever, followed by silence.

Long, long seconds and minutes of silence.

Trinity couldn't hold it anymore; the fear took hold of her stomach and she crumpled to the floor, retching. Something was wrong, here, very wrong—she'd never heard of a program like this before. This couldn't be human-made. And she couldn't reach her operator.

She was trapped.

And then, just when all seemed lost, a male voice echoed back through the dark:

"Raven?"

***

"Tank, what the hell was that?" Morpheus thundered.

"I don't know, sir."

"Well, where did she go?"

"I don't KNOW, sir!"

The captain activated a comlink: "Circuit! I need you, now, at the Core."

The two men were hunched over the monitors, Tank poring over a freeze-frame of code, Morpheus examining the same scene on one of the viewscreens. There was no logic to it. The explosion had detonated without warning, and when the dust settled, Trinity was gone. It was the same when viewed in code: the set of symbols that made up Trinity's RSI simply vanished. There one instant, gone the next. Boom.

Morpheus finally exhaled. "It has to be that virus, Tank, the scene looks exactly the same."

"It's not, though. I've been checking the preceding ten minutes for the same or similar types of aggressive search strings; there's just nothing there."

Circuit came charging down the ladder into the Core area. "What's wrong, guys?"

Morpheus turned to her, expression set and grim. "The camouflage program you wrote—you're certain it will fully cover every trace that she's pregnant when she's inside?"

"It should," Circuit shrugged, "I balanced her hormone levels, concealed development of the uterus and fetus, and made sure that she'd keep her same pre-pregnancy RSI—"

"The program was good," Tank interrupted, "as long as Circuit hid everything that needed hiding, it was a perfectly-written program. I checked the coding myself." He was still focused intently on the screens.

Circuit's voice shook as she addressed the captain again: "Why? What's wrong?"

"We don't know. But there was an explosion much like the one brought on by the tracking virus, and now she's gone."

The blonde's form flew to Trinity's chair and began feeling for a pulse, checking vitals. "She's not gone, but her vitals are almost disturbingly stable, like she's asleep, but even more so... and if you look at these alpha patterns--"

"That's not what we mean, Circuit," Morpheus said quietly. "In the computer, she's simply vanished. We don't know where she is, and until we do, we can't bring her back."

The following silence hung in the air like a heavy mist, seeping its way into the young Medic's lungs. She stood frozen between Neo and Trinity's suspended forms, trembling.

Morpheus extended a hand to comfort the frightened woman. "It's not your fault, Circuit. We _will_ get her back, don't worry." She nodded, slowly, before going to sit for a moment in one of the empty load-up chairs. Morpheus returned to stand next to Tank, near the monitors which were still looping a recording of the explosion.

"Bring up Neo, Tank. I want to see what he's doing."

The operator's fingers flew over the keyboard, and he tapped a viewscreen. Neo's RSI appeared, fully occupied with Agent Adams. "Holy shit, Morpheus, look at him. He didn't feel it. _He doesn't know she's gone._"

***

Something about the voice was undeniably familiar, but she knew she'd never heard it before. She couldn't tell how far away the source was, and yet something within her forced her to throw the name out into the dark:

"Neo?" She knew it wasn't his voice, but something about it was so similar…

"Raven? Raven, is that you?" the voice came back again.

And then, from somewhere not too far away, Trinity heard footsteps. Instinctively, she reached under her coat and her hand closed on the grip of her .45 as the sound came closer and closer, each step reverberating like leather shoe-soles on a marble floor and echoing off into the infinite distance. Trinity remained silent.

All of a sudden the black was broken by a thick stream of light, not really serving to enlighten her surroundings, but simply lightening the black to a less intense shade of grey. The beam found its way to her face, blinding her. The footsteps paused for a moment, long enough for the voice to joyously cry, "It's you! I knew I could bring you here!" before resuming at a fast run.

The beam of light remained fixed on her face, but she forced herself not to close her eyes against the glare. She stared fixedly into the light, trying to see past its source to the person who carried it, but to no avail. Once more, tentatively, she called Neo's name into the beam; it wasn't his voice, but something about it made her certain that he was its source.

The voice laughed.

***

"Don't tell him anything," Morpheus said calmly. "If you tell her she's gone, he'll refuse to come out until he finds her. But we have to pull him out before whatever got her gets him too."

"Roger that. I'm patching the call through now."

"Good."

Circuit, who had managed to regain her composure, moved to stand by Neo's head, prepared to release him when he woke up.

"Neo," Tank said lightly into his mouthpiece, carefully masking his concern, "change of plans, man. I need you to come back… no, don't worry about Trinity, you can just meet up over here… payphone, Wabash and Sherbrooke. I've already made the call… see you in a few."

Moments later, with a shuddering breath, Neo's form stirred to life in his chair. He fought, unsuccessfully, to keep from grimacing as Circuit removed his data spike, and then frowned as she promptly and wordlessly walked away to study Trinity's bio-display. He knew upon opening his eyes that something wasn't right; the atmosphere was tense and stoic. His gaze alighted on Trinity's body, still hanging inert in the load-up chair.

He understood.

"Morpheus, what the fuck is going on? Why isn't Trinity awake?"

***

The beam of light finally fell away from Trinity's face as the footsteps slowed and finally stopped just a few feet away. Her grip tightened on the handle of her gun, under her coat.

A moment passed in silence.

"Who are you?" she finally asked. In response, the light beam turned up, vertical, to shine on the face of the person carrying it. He was tall and squarely built, with an east-Indian complexion, a thick mop of shaggy black hair and a day's growth of beard. It was not a face she'd seen before, but there was something frighteningly familiar about it. The light moved, then, to rest on her face again.

"Raven… my Raven…" the man's voice cracked, "You look so beautiful." He lifted a hand and moved to touch her cheek, but she backed quickly out of his reach.

"No—Trinity," she said, "I'm Trinity."

"I know that," he said, sighing, "but to me, you are still so much my Raven. You look different this time, but your essence is still the same, your soul."

"I don't understand."

"It is the same for you, isn't it?" He stepped closer again, reaching up to gently brush her cheek with his fingertips. This time, she didn't pull away; instead, she strained through the black to see his face again. "I am familiar to you, even though you don't know me," he continued, "There is a name…"

Slowly, Trinity reached out and found the light-source: a flashlight clutched in the man's hand. He let her take it from him, and she turned it to shine in his face. It was the same as it had been seconds earlier, with dark olive skin and longer black hair, and yet there was still something—

"Neo," she whispered, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw, "you… you're Neo."

"Yes," he said, smiling, "I am Neo as you are Raven. You are Trinity as I am Zebulon."

"But you look so different."

"As do you from Raven."

"So you're called Zebulon?"

"I am."

"Who are you?"

"I am the One."


	4. Part IV

bigonepart4

A/N: Scottishlass - wow, we're almost done with this! One more chapter, which is well on the way, and then an epilogue, and you've got the Big One in its ...well, its bigness. Thanks to all who have said nice things to us. Some of you may remember Kristma, a once-upon-a-time member of FF.N...and is sorely missed...the New Humanists are her idea from a previous fic. I don't know if we used the term correctly, but anyway, it's her idea. Enjoy.

A/N: Centaur – Changing the name. It's no longer The Big One. It's The Huge-Ass Scary Endless Monster-length One. And you know, it's not really just a romance, or even a drama/romance, anymore. It's... a drama/romance/action/adventure/sci-fi/angst/yadda yadda yadda. Part V on the way. Not for the faint of heart.

Part IV 

Neo listened patiently, almost impassively, as Morpheus ran through the events which had just passed. He sat sideways in his load-up chair, staring fixedly at Trinity's frozen form as though her consciousness would slip away if he so much as blinked. Morpheus stood silently on her other side, watching the younger man's frozen expression as he explained what had happened. Then they remained quiet for a moment, the weight of the situation settling like a yoke over their shoulders. Finally, Neo spoke:

"Send me back."

"I can't, Neo," Morpheus replied calmly, "not until we're certain that whatever caught her won't catch you."

"I'm the One, Morpheus, it can't get me—"

"You don't know that."

"Yes I do! That's _my _world in there. I'll be able to sense it before it happens." He stood up, and his voice took on a quiet firmness. He remembered how Trinity had sounded, that day when he had needed to save Morpheus despite the impossible odds of success, and she had insisted on accompanying him. He tried to sound like her. "If I can't get her out of this, Morpheus, I will _never_ be able to forgive myself, or you, for letting her in. _Send me back_."

Morpheus's tone dropped, intensified. "Is that so, Neo? Do you truly believe you can't be touched in there? That you can sense absolutely everything? Well, tell me this, then: did you sense that explosion? Did you feel it when she disappeared?"

Neo was silent. Morpheus nodded in acknowledgment.

"Until we know what's going on here, Neo, you are not going back into the Matrix. Period."

Neo opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, he was cut off by Tank's frantic voice: "Oh shit, guys. Come here. You have to see this."

***

If Trinity had been confused before, she was fully disoriented now. This man was the One? How could he be the One? Neo was the One, she knew that, _knew_ it beyond force of reason or instinct. It was the truth. And so, after a few seconds of bewildered silence, she forced out the only words that would come to mind:

"Excuse me?"

"I am the One."

Trinity straightened, her tone becoming somewhat defiant. "That can't be. I know the One, and—"

Zebulon lifted a hand to silence her, smiling sadly. "Yes, you know the One. You know Neo, and he is the One. But he is not alone. There was another, before him…" his eyes locked with Trinity's, "and that was me."

"That's impossible," Trinity said flatly. "the original One lived a hundred and fifty years ago. If you were him, you'd be dead."

"I am."

***

Tank's fingers flew over the keyboard as he spoke, his tone so excited that he tripped over his words. In seconds, the other three crewmembers were hovering over him, eyes focused on the central monitor.

"See, we were focusing on Trinity. That's why we couldn't figure out what was going on—it didn't make sense, that she would be there one second and gone the next like that. But I ran through it again, and this time, I focused on the explosion itself. And get this, guys: it's invisible. That explosion is not expressed in the Matrix code."

The room was filled with bewildered silence.

Circuit's eyebrows came together, and she finally voiced the question nobody else dared to ask: "What does that mean?"

Tank finally sat back from the keyboard and tapped a viewscreen; a freeze-frame image of Trinity in midair after the explosion appeared on the monitor. He cracked the knuckles on both his hands. "I'm not sure. I'm thinking, though, that it means that the explosion comes from some kind of external source, an external program. As for what that is—I have no idea."

"It would have to be connected somehow, though," Morpheus mused, "but not through a pirate signal. We can detect pirate signals, and even if we couldn't, they operate with standard code so the explosion would be visible." He massaged his forehead with his fingertips for a moment, lost in concentration. "I can't figure it, Tank. This is something completely new."

Neo had remained distant, hovering detachedly over Trinity. Absently, he smoothed her hair back and watched it fall back over her forehead, then drew his fingers over his own scalp, briefly touching the plug at the base of his skull. And then, with a sharp intake of breath, he turned to his captain:

"Morpheus, I have an idea."

***

Trinity had nearly collapsed again from the pain of her injuries, so Zebulon had led her to an overstuffed red leather chair that she hadn't been able to see through the black. In more ordinary circumstances, she would have been struck by the fact that the chairs in which she and Zebulon sat were identical to those from the Construct which Morpheus loved so much. Now, though, everything was so far from ordinary that she didn't really think anything could shock her. She hadn't said anything in response to Zebulon's proclamation that he was dead. Instead, she sat quietly in her chair, waiting for him to explain.

"I was the first man born inside the Matrix, after its original inception," he began. "I was the first man freed, the first to free another person. They called me the One because I was the first. I discovered early on that once unplugged from the hardwired Matrix system, it became possible to bend the rules of the program. This is something you take for granted, now, but at the time, the revelation was earth-shattering to the resistance. Essentially, it was the discovery that gave us hope that offensive tactics within the Matrix might be a feasible step in the defeat of A.I. Before that we had assumed that we would simply have to unplug as many people as possible and then hold battles in the real world. Had that been the case, the war would have been over long ago, and we would have lost.

"Believe it or not, the first time I made a building-jump, I nearly overloaded the program. The Matrix was designed to operate within the parameters of that which is possible according to human psychology, and I had exceeded those parameters. The Matrix had never expected me, and as a result, had to adapt—"

"Wait," Trinity interrupted suddenly, the truth of Zebulon's last words striking like a blacksmith's hammer against her chest. "The Matrix never _expected_ you?"

"No, it didn't."

"The Matrix is not sentient."

Zebulon straightened sharply. He looked taken aback, almost shocked. "What do you mean? Of course the Matrix is sentient--" he paused. "The resistance has figured that out now, haven't you?"

Trinity was adamant, though. "It's not. We've tested it, examined the coding, there's no way that the Matrix can be a sentient program. It's impossible. It's still a computer, we can still read it that way."

"That's simply because it has deceived you, it has camouflaged itself. But trust me, I know, the Matrix is conscious and self-aware. It is the finest, supreme example of a sentient machine."

The thought was terrifying to Trinity, partly because of the enormity of the statement, and partly because of the weight it carried. If the Matrix was sentient, that changed absolutely everything in terms of how it was to be fought. Small wonder so little progress had been made before Neo arrived—the program was consciously adapting itself preventatively in ways that couldn't be predicted. How many lives could have been saved, how many more battles won, if the resistance had known this?

She responded in the only way she could: "Prove it to me."

***

"No."

Morpheus said the word with typical stoicism, the tone that seemed to take it for granted that he would not be challenged. He knew not to expect so little, though, because this was Neo he was dealing with, on the subject of Trinity. There were two things he had learned very quickly since his second-in-command and latest prodigy had become a couple. The first was not to interfere in their lovers' quarrels, which were rare but intense. The second was not to stand between them when one was in need of the other. Now, though, he was counting on his former influence on Neo's life to keep the younger man from quite blatantly risking suicide.

"Morpheus, this is the only way to find out what happened to her."

"If you want to watch the code of that explosion, you're more than welcome to do so. We can pull it up on the screens. But I simply refuse to allow you to run that sequence through your head, Neo. You will not risk yourself like that."

Neo's jaw pumped furiously, his teeth grinding against each other. His fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. He knew the idea wasn't smart. He also knew that it was the only alternative, short of waiting for Trinity to return of her own accord—or the accord of whatever was holding her. He inhaled slowly, shuddering, before proposing a compromise.

"What about this: we'll load it in a training Construct—something completely isolated from the Matrix itself. That way, if the explosion did somehow pull Trinity out of the Matrix, it won't be able to pull me. And you can pull me out of the program entirely if things start to appear too dangerous."

"Neo, you're not doing this, plain and simple. I will not sit here and let the One put himself in the position to—"

"Jesus, Morpheus! For once, would you just forget that I'm the fucking One and remember that I'm human, too? Because you need to understand something very simple: I can't do this without her. _I can't._ If I lose Trinity, I'll have lost the only anchor I have to my sanity, and One or no One, it will kill me. And really, if I die now or die then, it doesn't matter, now does it? So let me do this and at least give me the _chance_ figure this out."

Morpheus was quiet for a moment, turning over the pros and cons of Neo's proposal in his head. Absently, he ran his hand over his scalp as though he were trying to manually rub away the confusion. "All right," he said, finally, "we'll try it. But the moment anything—and I mean _anything_—seems to go awry, I'll pull you out. Do you understand?"

Neo grinned, finally tearing his gaze away from Trinity's face, "Yes, sir." He strapped himself into his chair, signaled Tank with a thumbs-up, and braced himself.

***

"Patience, patience, I'm getting there." Zebulon waved his hands at Trinity, motioning for her to relax. She ignored him, though, insisting on sitting perched on the edge of her chair. They could still barely see each other through the darkness, anyway.

"I could do anything in the Matrix," he continued. "I could shape it, mold it. I created the system of using telephones for exits, you know. I simply willed it into existence. Before that, the operator had to manually isolate the code of the RSI to be pulled out, and then manually retrieve it. The use of phones sped the process up and brought down the risk. The line acts like a funnel, drawing the consciousness back into the body.

"I could make changes to the system like no-one else, so I did. I made anything possible for those capable of overcoming their psychological barriers—of 'freeing their minds,' as you say. I didn't just break rules, I rewrote them. It was then that the Oracle made one of her first prophecies: that the One returning from death would herald the end of the Matrix. I thought that meant I was invincible, that I could not die. And so, when the time came that I believed I understood the Matrix in all its complexities, I attempted to take it down from the inside. By stripping away the influence of all the human consciousness with which the system was infused, I thought I had found the foundation of the system. I took hold of that central piece of code and tried to break it."

"And..."

"I couldn't. Instead, it took hold of me, it pulled me in, it drew me away from myself until my consciousness let go of my body. My body died in the real world, but my consciousness, my mind, became fused with the Matrix itself. I am only a small part of it; an almost infinitely small part, but I'm there. And that's how I know the program is sentient. I've been intertwined with it for years, I can feel it observing itself, I can feel it making analyses and changes, _I can feel it thinking_."

Trinity remained still for a moment, rigid on the edge of her seat. And then, slowly, she sank back, her coat sticking against the cracked leather of the seat. She exhaled.

"Jesus," she said quietly, "Jesus... that changes everything."

***

It was blue.

Once Neo saw that whatever had caused the explosion wasn't even the same colour as Matrix code, he thought he'd lost his ability to be surprised. Things couldn't get any stranger. A blue, codeless bulb appeared near the phone shortly before Morpheus and Trinity arrived. It passed over Trinity's code once, and brightened significantly, then passed over Morpheus, and dulled again. It moved in jerks and spasms, like a frightened mouse, before coming to rest just below Trinity's feet. _It's waiting_, Neo thought. _It's waiting for Morpheus to leave because it doesn't want him_. The code that made up Morpheus picked up the receiver and slipped into the phone line. A moment later, as Trinity reset the phone, the bulb erupted in explosion.

That part had been more or less predictable.

What wasn't predictable was what happened next.

At the base of the explosion, below Trinity's feet, a hole was ripped in the Matrix coding. It was as though the blue wedged itself between lines of symbols and forced them apart, leaving empty black space.

Trinity was swallowed into the hole.

And then, as sharply as it had appeared, the hole closed itself and the blue vanished with no mark of its existence except a shattered telephone and a missing resistance fighter.

Neo watched the scene over and over, each time letting himself come a little closer to the hole, trying to see what was on the other side. It was in vain, though—the empty blackness was too intense, there was nothing. A few moments later, dejected and confused, he asked to be pulled out.

***

Zebulon waited patiently in the dark for Trinity to regroup. The blow she had just taken was hard, and he understood that, so he sat quietly as she tried to puzzle it all out, to balance the new information against everything she had been taught since her unplugging.

Trinity felt like her stomach had been torn out of her abdomen. She felt deceived, she felt ignorant, she felt stupid. How had they not been able to figure this out? How had the resistance, in all its years of fighting the program, not been able to tell that it was _thinking_? She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands, forcing herself to suppress the wave of nausea that overtook her. Slowly, her back straightened, and she sat up.

"Raven," she said, "who was she?"

Through the darkness, she couldn't see the tears that sprung to Zebulon's eyes. When he spoke, though, she could hear the tremor in his voice, and the sadness that emanated from him seemed to burn against the back of Trinity's throat.

"Raven was..." he whispered, "she was... my everything. She had eyes like fire. I felt... full... full of her."

Trinity covered her mouth with her hand. Those were Neo's words... _I just feel... full... full of you..._ but in the mouth of a stranger. It was surreal.

"She was one of the first I unplugged. I don't know why I chose her, really. She hadn't been searching for the truth—or at least not in ways that we could detect. But I knew she needed to be in the Real, and I was right. She took to the truth so well... we co-captained our ship.

"She kept me sane, you know, on the outside. When the enormity of everything threatened to overwhelm me, I could just crawl into bed and hold her, and for the night, it would all just... not matter anymore. She could just hold onto me and make everything to away... She was so strong..."

Trinity choked into her palm.

"That's how she died, you know. She took hold of my hand when I started to unravel, when the Matrix was taking me, and even though I tried to let go, her grip was like iron. Her RSI couldn't take the strain. It was like a severed connection." He drew a shaky breath. "But now, you... there is so much of her in you... so much of you in her, it's astonishing..."

"Is that why you brought me here?"

She heard him laugh. "Yes, that was one of the reasons."

"What other reasons, then?"

"I want to help you."

Trinity paused, leery of what he might say next. "What makes you think I need help?"

She could hear him shift in his chair. "Your baby—"

"What do you know about her?"

"I want to help her."

Trinity shot straight up in her chair, roughly stretching the wounds in her back in the process. "You can help her? You... you know what's wrong with my baby?"

"I don't know what's wrong, but I can help. That's the problem, though—I can't help you from here. You'll have to see me from the outside."

"What do you mean?"

"This place, where we are right now—this is the other side of the mirror; it's the space between the Matrix code. Right now, you're in the system of the Matrix without being actually in the program. So now, what you see of me is what's left of my RSI when I manage to extricate myself from the rest of the program. To present myself to you like this, I've had to essentially detach myself from the Matrix, and I assure you that is no easy task." He frowned. "You see, Trinity, the cure for your baby _is in_ the Matrix --as Neo most likely feels--, but it won't give it to you. 

"So what do you mean, that I have to see you from the outside? From the real world?"

The pieces were sliding into place in Trinity's head, but she feared assumptions.

Zebulon continued, leaning in toward her, his voice taking on a new edge. "You must come and see me in the mainframe. I may be able to force it out of the program. I need you there...and you need me."

Trinity exhaled slowly. "The cure for my baby is in the A.I. mainframe."

"Yes."

***

Circuit slapped the back of Trinity's hand. "She _would_ have to have tiny veins, too," the medic groaned. "I've always said they should leave one plug in for medical purposes, but damnit, nobody ever listened..."

"What are you doing?" Neo came and stood behind the blonde, watching over her shoulder.

"I'm putting an IV in so I can set her up with a saline drip overnight," she held up a needle, "so she doesn't get dehydrated. If she's not awake by morning, I'll put her on a nutrient drip, too, but I don't want to do that until it's absolutely necessary since those are needed for the new pluggies." She paused for a moment in concentration, her eyebrows coming together, as she pressed the needle into a vein in the back of Trinity's hand. She examined it for a moment, tapping it gently, then relaxed. "There. Got it." She hooked the drip up to the IV line, then collected her tools and stood up. "I was worried for a minute I'd have to turn her into a pin cushion."

Neo smiled in spite of himself.

"I'll take second watch," she said, "since I assume you want the first—"

"Don't worry about it," Neo interrupted, "I'm staying with her all night. No point in any of you losing sleep if I'm going to be up anyway."

"Neo, don't be ridiculous. I won't let you, and Morpheus definitely won't—"

"I already spoke to him. Take a break."

The girl eyed him sideways for a moment, before nodding. "All right. I've got a buzzer, ok?" She pointed to a small battery pack strapped to her ankle, "so if her vitals or her alpha patterns go weird, it'll wake me up. If she does wake up, don't let her pull the IV out on her own—she'll tear her vein. I'll take it out as soon as I get here, all right?"

Neo listened carefully, and nodded. "Take a break, Circuit, you deserve it."

The medic smiled, nodded, and turned to walk away.

"Hey, Circuit?" Neo called after her.

She turned. "Yeah?"

"Good to have you aboard."

The blonde smiled, wider this time. "Thanks." And she left.

Neo got the blanket from their bunk and pulled it over Trinity's body, tucking it around her waist and behind her shoulders. Her hand was warm when he touched it, but the ship was cold, and he couldn't bear the sight of her lying there without any protection from it. Then he checked her vitals again, for the umpteenth time, and saw no change from the near-sleep patterns. He sighed, and ran his hands through his short hair. He hated feeling so helpless, and he hated not understanding. What was the blue? What did it mean? He'd described it to Tank and Morpheus; both had been dumbfounded. This was new. There was so much new going on, and Neo wasn't sure if that was a positive indication of the Matrix's slow destruction, or a negative one that they were losing.

He turned and went to sit on the edge of her chair, taking her free hand in his. The one with the IV was taped to the armrest to keep her from jerking it around if, for some reason, she started to move. He touched her cheek, traced her lips with his thumb.

"Hey, Trinity," he whispered. "You... you come back to me, ok?" He paused, felt heat spring to his eyes. "I love you."

With that, he slid to the ground beside her, fingers still intertwined with hers, and rested his head against the crux of her hip. He stayed like that for a long time, staring into space, entranced by the slow, rhythmic movement of her breathing.

***

"The mainframe." Trinity sighed, and brought her head down into her hands. Her stomach was flat when she touched it, her pregnancy still camouflaged. No further thought was necessary. "All right. I'll come to you in the mainframe."

Zebulon smiled. "And I will help you there. You must understand, though, that I won't be the same, there. Here, you see just me." He turned the light into his face again, for emphasis. "There, though, you will meet something different; you will meet the Matrix. What you see will be the face of the Matrix sentience."

"What does that look like?"

Zebulon paused for a moment, considering, before quietly answering, "I don't know."

This only served to unnerve her more, but if this was the risk she'd have to take, then so be it. She heard the leather of the other chair creak as Zebulon stood up. "Come," he said, "I will send you home, now."

Trinity looked up, at that. How long had she been gone? Seconds? Hours? Days? How did time pass in this program? What did the crew think had happened to her? She hadn't been thinking of them, but now, it occurred to her that they must be terrified. Was she comatose? "Yes," she said, with sudden urgency, "yes, please, send me back."

The two were standing facing each other in the dark. Zebulon held the flashlight between them, shining upward, so that both of their faces were illumined. "So you will come to me in the mainframe," he said, "I'll be waiting for you." He extended his hand to shake.

Trinity swallowed hard, nodded, and grasped his hand—

And she was jolted, like an electric shock, into a new sensorium; experiences like perfect memories coursing through her, but memories that weren't hers—

__

I'm cold. I'm cold and I'm wet, and it's dark—wait—open my eyes, there... yes... No! The light, the light hurts, why does the light hurt my eyes? Just wait a moment, rest, try again. Somebody's holding me... who? I must be in hospital... what was I thinking, taking a pill from that man? I have to see, I must open my eyes, slower this time... slowly...

There, that didn't hurt so much. Just don't look at the light, Rae, just don't look at the light... somebody's still holding me—who? Must turn my head... there... oh, my neck hurts, why does my neck hurt? I'm so tired... There he is, it's him who's holding me, I guess I'm not in hospital after all... What was his name? Something with a Z... He's looking at me, now, yes... he's going to say something... can I hear? Yes...

"Welcome to the other side, Raven. Welcome to the real world."

...

The jump program? What the hell? All right, fine, I'll give it a shot, although I don't understand why they've dumped me on a rooftop to do it, especially on one this high. My shoulder hurts... damn Zebulon in the sparring program. I'm gonna kick his ass when they finally let me of this fucking computer... Where is Zebulon, anyway? He's supposed to be here—

"Raven!"

What? From my right—oh, there he is.

"What the hell am I doing here, 'Lon? This your new pet project?"

He's smiling. He's so beautiful when he smiles. Ah, damming, now I'm smiling too... I'm supposed to be annoyed... ah, oh well.

"Be nice, Rae, I was up all night writing this program. I pulled this off in the Matrix yesterday and nearly crashed the system."

"What?"

"Watch."

He's running. Yeah, you can run fast, I know it, One-boy... shit—hey, stop! Stop, you're running out of space—

Oh God, he's going to jump off—

"Zebulon!"

He's not stopping, oh God, he's not stopping, stop, 'Lon, stop—I have to catch him—no, it's too late, there's the edge of the building, oh no—

Holy shit.

How can... "Ha! You're flying, 'Lon, you're flying!"

"No, just jumping, Rae. You can do it, too."

...

I have dishpan hands. A hundred and fifty years in the future, and this soap still gives me dishpan hands. Oh well, at least I only have to do dishes once a week, now. I like having other people taking turns with it the rest of the time. This ship is cold, but at least it's not lonely. I can't imagine living alone anymore.

My shoulder's still a little sore—better check the stitches... Ok, still good. Quite the encounter we had, today. I shot my twenty-fifth agent. Seems, sometimes, like they're almost getting stupider. Maybe we're just getting smarter. I like that idea better.

I wonder where Zebulon is... Must be in bed. Good thing, too—I don't want to see him. Damn, that woman didn't have to die in there, today. He's too quick with his gun, sometimes. She was pregnant, for Christ's sake. That baby was real, for her.

"Raven?"

Oh, damn. There he is. I should have known, he hates to go to bed angry.

"Well, if it ain't Quick-Draw McGraw."

"Jesus, Rae, can't you just let this go? It was a mistake—"

"That wasn't a mistake, 'Lon. That was a life. A life isn't a mistake. You killed her."

"She could have morphed—"

Yeah. Now THAT's an excuse. "Yeah, she could have, but she hadn't yet. You could have dealt with her if the need arose. You just took her life, the life of her unborn child. You stole some guy's wife and kid. That's real, to them."

"Ha, I thought you were pro-choice in your Matrix days."

"So?"

"So then I only took one life."

"Fuck you, that's not the same and you know it." Maybe I should hit him. Maybe I can beat the sense back into him—

"You're right..."

Excuse me?

"You're right, Raven, I shouldn't have shot her."

Ah. Right. Ok. He's admitting he's wrong, that's nice. So who the hell is he and what has he done with my Zebulon?

"I'm sorry, 'Lon, I think something's wrong with my hearing."

"What?"

"I thought I heard you say you were wrong."

He smiles. Damn, why does he always have to smile? "I did."

Huh. My hands are still wet, where did I leave that towel? Ah, yes, there it is. "Do me a favor, would you?"

"Anything."

"Learn to say those words more often."

He's smiling again... Damn, 'Lon, don't smile at me, I need to be angry at you right now, you deserve me to be angry at you right now... No, no, keep your mouth closed, don't say anything, just walk away, don't say anything...

"Raven..."

"Yeah?"

"I was wrong." Oh, god.... "I was wrong, I was wrong, I was wrong..." Dammit, 'Lon, stop... "And I promise I'll try to think before I shoot from now on."

Well, I guess that's my cue to forgive him. Shit, 'Lon, you make it so hard for me to stay upset with you... don't you ever leave me, ok? Don't you ever leave me...

"'Lon." 

Uh oh... evil ideas. Evil, evil ideas. It's late, they're all in bed except Rebel and he's on watch... oh, yes, evil ideas.

"Yeah?"

"Close the door."

I'm grinning. It feels nice to grin like this. My face is warm. There, he's closing the door, like I asked... come here, baby. Ha, he's grinning, too. He's such a big kid sometimes. Hold me, 'Lon, just hold me, please... Your chest is warm. Can't we just stay like this for awhile, or maybe forever, and just forget about everything... 

"I love you so much, Raven... how do you put up with me?"

"Don't kid yourself, it's not always easy."

"Don't be angry at me again."

"I don't want to be angry at you again. Don't give me reason, ok?"

"Ok."

Oh, you big oaf... come here, kiss me. Kiss me. I love you.

...

His hand is shaking, and it's cold. I hold it tighter. His skin is smooth against my palm. It's callused, in the real world. 

"Are you sure this is going to work, Zebulon?"

He's looking at me—no, don't look at me, not like that. I don't want to see that face. Say yes, 'Lon, say yes, please...

"No."

"I won't let you go." I won't. I'm going to hold you, I'm going to hold onto you so if the damn program takes you it can take me too. I can't be alone, 'Lon, not when I'm so used to having you...

"Don't say that, Rae."

I can't look at him anymore. It's sunny outside, a beautiful day in the Matrix. A beautiful fucking day in the neighborhood... you'd think it's Mr. Rogers place. Ha, let's just all hold hands and get along, wouldn't that be nice? I wish... we all wish. So I'll just hold his hand, instead, and I won't let it go. I won't let it go.

"There... that field, there. That should be good. No people." He's talking to Triton, now. Poor boy, he's terrified. Look at him. His face is white.

"Zebulon..." he says, "what do we do if this doesn't work?"

"Go back to the ship, get to Zion. You'll be taken care of there." 

The air is still, outside the car. Stagnant. I can practically feel the humidity condensing on my clothes. I follow him through the cornstalks; the leaves sting my face. He raises a hand before he stops.

"Here. This will do." His hand isn't shaking anymore, and it's warm. Are you confident, Zebulon? You can do this. 

"Raven, please, stand back." 

"I won't."

"Rae..."

His tone is wrong... no, it's wrong. He's expecting to die. You can't die on me, 'Lon, I won't let you, I won't let you die without taking me with you. Let me kiss you, 'Lon, one more time, ok? Let me kiss you... Yes, there, now just stay here, just forget it's not real and let me hold your mouth for a little while, for a last little while, please... 

Thank you.

He's holding out his hand—you're going to take me? Thank you, 'Lon, I need to do this, let me hold you here.

"All right. Let's try to do this together."

"Thank you, Zebulon."

His eyes slide out of focus, like he's looking at something far away. What can you see? 

Ah! He's screaming, oh God, he's screaming, help him, hold him—you can't leave me— my ears, God, my ears, he's hurting, he's screaming, let him go, please, let him go, don't hurt him anymore—

Blackness.

***

Trinity's eyes fluttered open slowly to find herself on her back again, spine stiff and arched against the cold floor. And Zebulon was still there, kneeling by her head, brow furrowed. She could feel that he was still holding her hand, and it unnerved her a little before she realized that her grip on his fingers was like iron. Slowly, painfully, she sat up and freed him.

"Are you all right?" he asked, genuinely. "You went stiff the moment you touched my hand—I wanted to wake you but your eyes were moving under your eyelids."

"Yes, I'm fine," Trinity said quietly, after a pause. She stood slowly, flexing her muscles one at a time, testing out her joints. "It's all in my head, anyway."

"Yes." Zebulon's forehead was still crumpled, eyes marked with concern. "Shall I send you back now, or do you wish to... rest... for a moment?"

She let her eyes meet his for a few seconds, that light lurking behind them that was so like Neo and, she realized now, so very much like Zebulon. When she moved, then, it was almost involuntary. Perhaps that old corner of her soul had pushed its way through, taking hold of her for just a few seconds, just long enough for her to step forward and touch her lips to Zebulon's for the briefest moment... She felt none of the burning, intense passion that she felt with Neo, but it was a familiar touch, a comforting link to the past, the way a childhood teddy bear was comforting during a thunderstorm.

"From Raven," she said as she stepped back, "because she really loved you, 'Lon."

Through the dark she couldn't see his eyes welling up, she couldn't see him grasp at his chest. She could only hear the slight tremor in his voice as he whispered "Thank you," and "Goodbye."

***

Neo was watching the monitors. It was what he was really supposed to be doing, after all, and even though he would have preferred to spend the night watching Trinity's face for the slightest signs of waking, he knew that somebody had to keep an eye on the city. "A watched pot never boils," his mother used to say. Perhaps she was right. Perhaps, in order for Trinity to wake up, he had to distract himself. So he lost himself in the familiar intricacies of the code, letting himself forget the blue for the time being and just keep an eye on the green. He had found that it was almost fun, at times. Once you became fast enough at reading the code, you could watch the goings-on of the Matrix like one of those silly reality-TV programs. So now, he immersed himself in it, losing himself in the observation of his former world, wanting, for just a few minutes, to forget about his current one.

That didn't keep him from hearing her when she stirred. He was afraid to turn in his chair, for a moment, because he was afraid of seeing that she wasn't really awake, that he was hallucinating. Instead, he glanced at the clock. It had been over sixteen hours since she had vanished. But then her vitals started to pick up, her alpha patterns accelerating, and he knew she was coming back this time. 

***

Circuit surveyed the medlab, which now was up to her expectations. The place had fallen into disrepair; after the sentinel attack that nearly destroyed the ship it was one of the last places to be fixed. Circuit wondered if they'd left it alone out of respect for Dozer. She was surprised, actually, that Tank was in here now. He seemed to be doing well, and she was glad of the company. Tank apparently was, too, after pulling another fourteen-hour shift at the core. Morpheus had volunteered to take over, and Tank gladly accepted. He'd seen the lights on in the medlab and stopped by on his way to bed. . 

"I don't know if I'm ready for this," she muttered as she looked around the room. "I've never been on my own before." She picked the buzzer that held Trinity's vitals from her ankle. She set it on her recently disinfected lab table where it made an sterile _thunk_.

"You're ready," said Tank. "I can tell. This place is yours now." He gave her an approving smile. "Dozer would have liked you," he said at last.

"Thank you. That means a lot."

"That table's gonna be your best friend when you reconstruct someone, pins and needles all over the place." He shivered; medicine was never his thing. "Hopefully you can put that thing in action as soon as we find another potential candidate."

"Found any promising people yet?"

"Yeah, one. Let's hope this kid has any potential to be an operator. I'm exhausted."

"Maybe," replied Circuit. "Let's hope he's not the traitorous kind, either."

"Damn him!" Tank wrinkled his face in disgust and spat on the floor.

"Hey, I just cleaned that!" She bent to wipe it up. "If you need an operator, Tank, you should have asked. I could get you an operator. I just assumed you'd want to find him in the Matrix."

"Actually, we make better operators, if you ask me," said Tank, implying freeborn crewmembers. "Don't ever get those desires to go romp around the Matrix and kick ass."

"You don't get those?"

"Nope."

"Shit, I do. I almost with they'd retrofit me with plugs and shit just so I could go in."

"They don't do that, Circuit. Don't even say that. That's...dirty."

"You've been on this ship too long, baby. You want plugs? You can get 'em."

"I don't believe you."

"You should. I know someone who's got one. It's not exactly legal, you know. He's got to cover it up...it's on his back. And it's not really anything you can slip a data spike into...it's shallow, goes into his spinal column. Pretty experimental, but well done. It apparently works."

"No shit?"

"No shit."

"So, who's got one of these things? I'd love to meet him."

"I dunno, Tank. He's part of Zion's underground, a tunnel-runner."

"And where did you meet this character," laughed Tank. "You're a medic...I doubt you had much time to hang out with the New Humanists."

Circuit eyed Tank closely. "I treated him after his...surgery. They basically butchered him. I think it was a lot more complicated than they thought it would be. It's not like you have these types of things done in a hospital. I think his buddies at the Academy did it, actually. He was dropped off; he was my patient. He lay there, a kid my age, bleeding and oozing all over the place. My superiors told me to dig all of the new shit out of him and dispose of him quietly when he died."

"But you fixed him."

"As best I could. He was a mess...I mean, you've never seen a Matrix-born's brain, Tank. It's mind-boggling, really. Precision electronics, interwoven and _combined with_ their own organic tissue...fascinating. I couldn't have pulled it all out of him, it was now a part of him. I did the best I could. He woke up three days later. I smuggled him out; substituted his body with that of a pluggie who didn't make it; had it burned. Technically, he doesn't really exist."

"Wow. Did you like, keep in touch with this guy?"

Circuit now blushed in spite of herself. "Well, yes and no. I tried my best to forget about the whole ordeal, you know. Not exactly a good thing to have hanging around your shoulders when you're trying to advance in the ranks. He wouldn't really let me, though. I hear from him occasionally. He lets me know about the New Humanist movement and his latest adventures at the mainframe."

Tank's eyes widened. "He's been in the mainframe?"

"He _is_ a tunnel runner. And not _in_. At."

"What's he do there?"

"Hell if I know. They're Zion's best kept secret...groups of people not affiliated with the government who actually hack into the main frame once and awhile, pulling out minute bits of information and anonymously bring back for study. Zion never asks their identity; they wouldn't want to be responsible for their deaths.

"Deaths, eh?"

"He says it's like a big, black, greasy clock, crawling with biomechanical beasties. They pick the ticks of the elephant, so to speak. Ever seen one?"

"Once. Saw the pickers. Scary-looking fuckers."

"Never seen 'em. Never want to. Anyway, the machines don't usually even know they're there. They're like mosquitoes. They just suck off a bit of seemingly useless information and bring it back. It's great for analyzing Matrix code; it's originally how we deciphered the code in the first place."

"You don't have to tell me, I _am_ the operator."

"Hey, I'm just repeating what he's told me. That's where he was before they...doctored him up. In training to be an operator. He was almost done. I'm just learning all of this code stuff, remember?"

"So he's a tunnel runner _and_ an operator. Sounds valuable. What's his name?"

"He goes by Mole," she said, but quickly followed it with, "but don't go looking him up or anything, okay? He's got a crazy enough life. Promise?"

"Promise."

She held out her hand for Tank to shake. He did, and Circuit knew he was genuine. She went back to scrubbing when Tank left, recalling Neo's kind words earlier and feeling ten times more confident and more loved than ever before. For the first time aboard the Neb, she actually felt comfortable, like she belonged. She could actually say she was relaxed. In fact, she jumped when the buzzer went off, danced across the metal table, and fell, still rattling, to the floor.

***

The transition between the darkness of Zebulon's world and the darkness behind her eyelids was fuzzy; it took a few seconds before Trinity realized that she was back on board the ship. Her eyes felt heavy and sticky, as though she'd been asleep for a long time. More strange than that, though, was the fact that her injuries were gone. Her shoulder didn't hurt anymore, and she could feel that the skin of her cheek was unbroken. She didn't feel the dizzy light-headedness that usually came with that kind of blood loss.

From somewhere nearby, she heard the squeak of a rusty joint—the operator chair. A pair of feet skidding softly across the metal floor, careful not to make any abrupt noises. And then the voice, quiet, whispered:

"Trinity?"

__

Neo. 

Slowly, she forced her eyelids apart, cringing momentarily against the harsh light. And in an instant he was right there, next to her chair, with a hand up to shade her eyes from the fluorescent glow.

Trinity opened her mouth slowly, parched lips cracking with the movement, and her tongue felt thick and dry. "How long was I gone?" she forced out in a hoarse whisper.

"About a day, Trin."

Her eyelids drooped again. "Shit."

"Hey, don't worry about that now." He reached behind her head and unplugged her, stretching to re-set the data spike without leaving his spot, perched on the edge of her seat. "Just keep still for another minute or two, and Circuit will be here to take out your IV."

She smiled, "So that's why I can't move my arm."

"Yeah."

Trinity lifted her free hand and rubbed the sleep from her eyes with thumb and forefinger. She sighed. "I've learned things, Neo. Things that change... well, _everything_, and—"

"Shhhh..." Neo touched her mouth to silence her, "Just wait a minute, let yourself wake up." He looked up suddenly, over her head, and smiled. "Here comes Circuit to unhook you. 

As if on cue, Trinity heard footsteps approaching from behind her, at a run, followed by the medic's voice: "Is she up? Did she wake up?"

Neo nodded.

Circuit slid to a halt beside the chair and looked down, her face breaking into a grin when she saw Trinity's open, alert eyes. She exhaled. "Oh, thank God." Without another word, she peeled the tape away from Trinity's forearm and pressed a packet of gauze to the back of her hand as she withdrew the IV. "Here, keep pressure on this for a few minutes." And then, her medical duties completed, she collapsed into the next chair.

"Circuit?" Trinity asked.

"Yeah?"

"Could you get Morpheus and Tank and meet us in the mess hall? We... have to talk."

"Of course!" Circuit fairly jumped to attention, still smiling, before jogging off down the hall to find the captain and operator. 

Trinity sat up and swung her leg over the side of the seat, cringing against the momentary headrush. Neo wrapped an arm around her shoulders. "Maybe this should wait until tomorrow—"

She shot him a look. "No. We need to do this now." She brought a hand up to rest on the swell of her stomach, and shook her head quietly. "We need to do this now," she repeated.

"All right."

Trinity was fine when she stood up, the slight dizziness having faded, but she let Neo wrap an arm around her anyway because it obviously made him feel like he was helping. He was funny that way—he liked to help her with things, even when he understood perfectly well that she could do them by herself. She was the strong one, after all, and they both knew it, though neither said anything, and this way Neo felt like maybe she was getting a bit from him in exchange for everything he got from her. Even all these months later, he still couldn't believe his luck that she was the warmth in his bed every night.

"Trinity?" He broke their silent walk, stopping her for a moment in the corridor.

"Yes?"

He tugged on her hand, turning her to face him, then looked down, pulling his fingers through his hair. "Don't... please, don't do that again..." His eyes came up again, meeting hers in the shallow light. "Don't make me deal with that again."

She smiled, then pulled him closer to her and slipped her arms around his shoulders. "I can't promise you that," she said quietly into his neck, "because I didn't control it. But for what it's worth, I'll try."

He relaxed against her, arms snaking around her waist to hold her tighter. She chuckled softly.

"What?" Neo mumbled into her hair.

"I would kiss you right now, but my mouth tastes vile, I need water—"

With a sudden, gentle push, her back thumped softly against the wall, his mouth firmly planted on hers, moving insistently. And then his hands crept up to her face, pulling her in deeper, as he let all the anxiety of the previous hours to bubble back to the surface, relishing the feeling of her hands on the back of his neck. And she was pulling him closer, the reality of the new truths settling on her shoulders, kissing him back with as much passion as she could as she came to realize that this was one thing that she _couldn't_ do on her own. 

Too soon, they separated.

"They're waiting for us," Neo finally said.

"Yeah." Trinity sucked in a shaky breath, prepared for what she would now have to explain. She tugged on his hand. "Come on."

***

The silence hung thick in the mess hall, nobody fully prepared to accept what they had heard. 

"So that's what we have to do," Trinity finished firmly. Neo found her hand under the table. "The cure for our baby is in the mainframe." Her gaze held Morpheus's, knowing that the weight of the decision rested on his shoulders. 

Morpheus, fully aware of the position he was in, leaned back in his seat, steepling his fingers against his chin. In his mind, there was no question as to whether or not they would go. There were laws, though, as usual. He had never been to the mainframe, his strength having always been at offensive attacks _within_ the Matrix. If they applied to Zion for help, though, the bureaucratic processes would certainly outlast Trinity's pregnancy.

He looked up at his crew. Tank was sitting back, arms folded in front of him, chin resting against his chest. He was a candid observer, usually—it was the trait that made him such a fine operator. To the untrained eye, he would have appeared impassive. Morpheus, however, was far from untrained. He could see the operator's tense muscles; read the determined glint in his eye. He wanted to go. Circuit sat beside him, leaning on her hands, gaze focused on some point beneath the table surface. Morpheus knew that she had her heart set on delivering Trinity's healthy baby.

Neo and Trinity sat close to each other at the far end of the room. One of Trinity's arms was wrapped firmly, protectively, over her torso; Neo held the other in his lap. Morpheus watched as Neo spoke quietly in Trinity's ear; she met his eyes and smiled. 

Morpheus made up his mind. 

"We're going to need help," he said. Four pairs of eyes shot up to attention. "Zion policy dictates that no licensed ship may go to the mainframe alone, and never without a certified guide."

"We don't have time," Trinity cut in, "Mainframe guides die all the time. Getting one will take months, not to mention all the other red tape—"

"Exactly," Morpheus affirmed. "Which is why we're going to have to bypass Zion."

An incredulous silence overtook the space. In his corner, only Tank smiled quietly behind his hands and nodded in silent approval. 

Circuit, whose ties to her birthplace and homeland were still strong, didn't appear as confident. The Zion political machine was there for a reason, she thought, and so far it had worked just fine. People in the city were happy. "Are you sure that's a smart idea?" she finally stammered.

Morpheus smiled at the newest crewmember. "Circuit," he said softly, "as you come to spend more time with us, there's something you'll learn. Zion is... it's the only place we have left, yes, but it's sorely misguided. The government has been backpedaling for years, preventing any worthy advances against the machines. Look around you," he said, holding out his arms, "Look at the food we eat and the bunks we sleep on. Look at the clothes you're wearing. Trinity can barely fit in hers anymore, and _when_ she carries her baby to term," he emphasized the _when_ for Trinity's benefit, "I don't know how we're going to keep her in proper clothing."

Circuit sat back in her chair, stunned. "But surely Zion will—"

"No, they won't." The tone of his voice was cold and steely, it sent a chill through Circuit and she immediately wished that she had shown more restraint around her new captain. The entire crew felt her discomfort, including Morpheus. "I'm sorry," he said quietly. He paused, finding the words to explain. "Every time we go on leave, I'm required to spend day after day cooped up in dingy offices in meetings with these political executives. I was in a meeting, this past stay, where they wandered off on a tangent about how to spend a large donation willed to them by a doctor who had died." He looked at the medic. "If you left a large sum of your own money to the city, Circuit, what would you want them to do with it?"

She thought. "There's so many things it could be used for...repairs on resistance ships, supplies, training programs...countless things. I'd personally hope it would go cleaning up conditions on ships. I had no idea how much we lack out here."

Morpheus nodded. "Do you know what they're going to do with this inheritance, Circuit? They're going to develop a new hot spring." He paused for emphasis, meeting the eyes of each crewmember in turn. "My finest officer is carrying a miracle child, and I can't get her proper clothing. But they can still build Zion's 44th public hot spring."

Tank sat in silent understanding. Neo looked, quite simply, horrified; he had both arms wrapped protectively around Trinity as though that would be enough to keep her warm. Trinity kept her same stoic, unreadable mask, jaw squarely set.

Circuit's face was drawn, pale. She had a hand over her mouth. "I had... no idea," she said finally. "No idea."

"I know that," Morpheus said quietly. "And it's not your fault. They keep you happy and ignorant so you won't challenge them. But you're on our end now."

Circuit could only nod numbly. 

"We're going to need a tunnel-runner," Morpheus finished, back on the topic at hand. "One from the Zion underground. Tank, do you know anyone?"

Tank's gaze wandered to Circuit. Silent conversation passed between their eyes, and with new conviction, Circuit spoke:

"I know someone."

***

After convincing Neo to go to sleep, Trinity slipped out of the mess hall by herself. Unnoticed, she crept to the back of the ship and down the ladder to the engine room. And there, shrouded in the deafening din of the boilers and pistons and fusion reactors, she let herself break, the sobs heaving from deep within her abdomen. She fell to her knees against one of the fuel cells, one hand on her stomach, the other over her mouth. _What am I thinking, bringing a child into _this _world?_ What kind of burden was she imposing on the rest of the crew, and on their mission as a whole? Simple problems—things like maternity clothes—had never really occurred to her. What other minor essentials would come up missing, what other essential pieces?

The nausea hit her like an Agent's fist. With a hand over her mouth she raced up the ladder to the lavatory, skidding past Tank in the hallway.

When she emerged a few minutes later, face a little pale but otherwise fine, Tank was there waiting for her by the door.

"Shit." She shook her head.

"What?"

"Twice in my unplugged life I cry and puke, and both times you find me."

Trinity did not resist when he wrapped a muscled arm around her, pulling her to his chest. "You can't always be the strong one, Trin. You take too much on yourself. I can be strong for you this time, little sister. You deserve to be worried."

They stayed like that in silence for a few minutes.

"I've been online with Mom," Tank said as she relaxed. "I told her about the baby. She can't believe it. She's thrilled." He pushed her away now, forcing her to hold his eyes. "We're gonna take care of you, Trin. Everything you need—clothes, extra blankets, baby clothes. She still has everything from when I was a baby, and what she doesn't have she wants to make. We'll arrange for Mole to bring it when he comes."

"_If_ he comes."

"He will. I know it."

Trinity shook her head slowly, eyes wide. She brought a fist to her mouth. "Tank, your family has always been too good to me."

Tank chuckled. "Come on. It's your family too." He ruffled her hair. "Ma loves you like the daughter she never had. She's gonna want the baby to call her Grannie."

Trinity was still dumbfounded. "Tank, I don't know what to say... but thank you... for everything."

***

Neo didn't go to sleep, as he told Trinity he would. Instead, he ducked around to the back hallway and knocked on the door of the captain's quarters.

"Come in."

Morpheus was sitting at his small desk, poring over tunnel maps.

"Approach strategies for the mainframe," he said, before looking up. "Take a seat, Neo. What can I do for you?"

Neo sat in the small extra chair by the door, resting his head in his hands. His face still bore traces of horror and disgust from the meeting. "You weren't kidding, were you."

"No."

Neo shook his head slowly. "You know, when we were in Zion, I was thrilled to see all the old-fashioned creature comforts that I'd been missing. It never occurred to me to wonder why things could be so nice there when they're so terrible here."

"That's the case for most people. It's the intention of the city."

"But we could be so much more efficient—"

"They don't care." Morpheus leaned forward to look Neo square in the eye. "What you need to understand is that Zion leaders have little interest in ending the war. The war sustains their city. After all, who would choose to stay underground when we regain control of the Earth's surface?"

"Jesus, Morpheus, I never thought of it that way."

Morpheus nodded. "I know."

"But Christ, Morpheus, _maternity clothes_!" Neo erupted, throwing out his arms. "That's not a luxury, it's a necessity."

"They don't believe she'll carry to term."

That was enough to push Neo over the edge. "What is this, Morpheus? It's a fucking Brave New World! Keep 'em all happy and ignorant so they don't challenge shit. Don't bring a savage into civilization." Neo's eyes held a primal glare. "You know, I thought I'd be done when the Matrix was destroyed. I thought I could just settle down, marry Trinity, live my life, raise my daughter. But now I'm going to have to change things. People will listen to me when this is done. I'm _the One_, after all." He grimaced.

A grim smile broke across Morpheus's face. "You know I'll stand with you every step of the way. Because you _are_ the only one who can change things. And if that's your dream—to settle down with Trinity as your wife—you're going to have to change things." Morpheus rested a hand on his friend's shoulder. "There has never been a marriage in Zion."

That was more than Neo could stand to hear. He put his face back in his hands and cried.

***

The next morning brought Neo's mind together with Mole's, meeting together though miles apart.

"Wow, this is really cool. You're like _The One_. I'm so pleased to meet you."

"Likewise," said Neo to the man who recently joined him in the construct. "Say 'hi' to Tank, Mole. He's our operator, listening in on us today. Hope you don't mind."

"Not at all. Hi, Tank" he called to no one imparticular.

"Holy shit, Mole," said Tank, watching the whole thing on the monitors. He was still in shock over the fact a Zioner could plug himself into a computer. He considered whether he was jealous or not for a moment, then decided that he'd rather be damned than have wires running through his body. A cool trick, but still seemed, well, dirty and traitorous to Zion in some ways. It went against everything they were taught to believe in. Nonetheless, Mole seemed to be exactly what he was looking for...he'd fit in with the crew nicely, had more than enough experience, and could be utilized on Matrix missions if needed.

How's Circuit?" asked Mole. 

"Catching on well. She's well suited for the resistance. And she knows her stuff."

"Saved my sorry ass."

Neo studied his companion carefully. Mole looked differently than Neo had expected. He was smaller, more frail than Neo expected him to be, and younger, too, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. His Asian features conveyed wisdom beyond his years as well as honesty and warmth.

"You wish you hadn't done it?" asked Neo.

"Somedays yes, somedays no. I really screwed up, man. Blew all chances of actually getting on board a ship. Sometimes I wonder exactly what I was thinking. But then again, other days, when I'm at the mainframe, sucking the juice out of those bastards..." He paused, raising his eyebrows, "..._that_ makes it worth it."

Neo chuckled. "It's still really hard to believe that you're actually in Zion."

"Yeah, I guess it would be, from your perspective. Probably weirder for Tank, eh? Hey, Tank?" he called to the ceiling, "really, man, you don't want to be here. It's like you're missing something. I feel like I'm walking around without my balls."

Tank smiled at the screens back at the Core. He was glad his boys were staying put. 

"So Circuit said you needed to talk to me. You need my services? God, I'm so humbled. Really, I am."

"Don't be. What we're going to ask you to do isn't something that most people would be interested in. You can turn this down."

"I have this feeling you aren't going to ask me to join your crew as an operator."

Neo detected a note of disappointment in his voice. "Actually, Mole, we do need another operator. Morpheus has been handling a small shift so Tank can get at least six hours of sleep a night, and you can imagine how irritating he finds it."

Mole shook his head in the negative...he couldn't imagine operating being irritating.

"Anyway, we're going to need go to the mainframe. I need someone to get us there safely, get us in, and then get us back out again."

"In? You mean like _in _the mainframe?" The younger man stared at Neo in disbelief. "You want to be _plugged into_ the mainframe. I know I don't have to say this, but do you have any idea as to how dangerous that is? That's just like...pulling your brain out and offering it as an appetizer. Holy shit, it could kill you."

"I know that. We really don't have much other choice, though."

"Why?"

"I'd like your assurance that you're with us before I explain it all to you. I don't know what will happen, Mole, or if we'd even make it out alive."

Mole thought for a moment. "Why me? It's not the plug."

"No, not really. You've been doing this for four years now and you're still alive. Circuit trusts you. Zion doesn't even know you exist."

"And that's important?"

Neo exhaled. "It's crucial."

Mole considered all he had given up and left behind. Then he considered the blonde who saved him. He looked Neo in the eye and said, "I'll do it." 

***

Mole met up with the Nebuchadnezzar a week later. Nobody questioned how he got to the arranged meeting spot thirty miles outside of the city, but he was there, where he said he'd be, sitting on his crate of equipment in the tunnel. Not all of his friends thought so highly of the resistance, he told them later, so they remained hidden and secretive. 

On board the ship, Mole greeted Circuit with a warm hug and everybody else with a firm, friendly handshake. Tank approached him skeptically at first, regarding the new man like some kind of human oddity. Trinity elbowed him in the ribs.

"Be nice, Tank," she muttered. "The man's going to give you time to sleep. Look at him. He's so excited to see a Core again, you may get a week off before he gives you your chair back."

Tank seemed to consider this for a moment. "Damn, damn strange," he mumbled under his breath. And then, with a shrug, he threw off his reluctance and offered his new partner a tour of the ship. Everyone scattered after that, Trinity offering to take a shift at the Core so Morpheus could work and the operators could get to know each other. She didn't really mind taking watch on occasion; it was almost always uneventful and gave her quiet time to think. _So this is really going to happen. Shit, the mainframe. The _mainframe. _God, how did this happen_. Now, when she considered it, it was hard to believe that there had ever been a time when there had been a routine, a simple day-in-day-out cycle of actions that kept their sector of the Matrix under control. The only changes were unpluggings and deaths, but even the latter of those could become regular to the point of monotony. And now there was a birth, a new crewmember from the underground, a trip to the mainframe—

Footsteps broke her train of thought. She swiveled in her seat as Tank stepped up into the Core. He had a package tucked under his arm.

"How's the new guy?" she asked.

"You know, he's a good kid. Nice guy, and he knows his shit. I dropped him off with Morpheus—I guess they want to head out within the next few days."

Trinity nodded, and returned to the screens. 

"Hey, wait—don't you want to see your stuff?"

Trinity turned back. "What?"

Tank held out the package—an inconspicuous thing wrapped in old cotton and tied with a ratty length of string. He placed it in her lap. "It came with Mole, remember?"

Trinity slowly pulled away the string and unwrapped the cloth, careful not to let anything fall to the floor. Wrapped inside were neatly folded blankets and oversized sweaters woven of soft wool, and under that—three tiny sweaters, finer blankets, small clothes. Even a glass baby bottle with—Trinity laughed—hand-written instructions on how to use it tucked inside. 

"Your mother," she said finally, "is a rare kind of wonderful."

Tank laughed. But before he could respond, he turned to face the footsteps coming up behind him. Morpheus.

"I need you both in the mess hall. It looks like we're heading in sooner than I'd originally planned."

***

The next few hours were busy and tense; Zion sent word that they would like to have the Neb and its crew back for a press conference and a strategic planning meeting within seventy-two hours. Morpheus lied and bought them two more days. In five days, they would have to go back, or Morpheus knew they would be retrieved.

Neo wanted to plug into the Matrix to try to contact Zebulon. His feelings about Trinity's meeting with the shadow of his former self was unnerving, and he didn't know whether or not to completely trust anything that came out of the Matrix anymore. He tried to believe, however, for Trinity's sake, and plugged in later that evening hoping to make contact with the elusive Zebulon.

His mission was unsuccessful, as he couldn't find Zebulon anywhere within the boundaries of the Matrix. He'd figured as much - if Trinity was right, if he had extracted himself to appear to her, more than likely he wouldn't be able to do it again. Neo wondered, however, about where she had gone to when she disappeared from the screens. Zebulon had told Trinity that it was the space between the code, that he was in the system but not in the program. Neo wondered how that was possible, and he wondered how he could get there. His attempts failed, and he returned to the real world with a headache.

"I really wanted to talk to him," he said to the crew as they discussed their plans over the evening meal. "There's still so much we don't know," said Neo, shaking his head.

"Like what?" asked Tank.

Neo grabbed a paper and stylus from Morpheus, pushing aside his own half-eaten slop and ignoring Trinity's look as she continued to choke down the gruel. "One. We don't know what to expect once we get there. How many machines are there? Do we just go plug ourselves in to the nearest one and hope for the best? Maybe that one's in control of...hell, temperature regulation or something. We'd waste an incredible amount of time."

Mole shifted in his seat. "Well, I can answer that one. There's one machine."

"One?" All pairs of eyes looked at him incredulously.

"Don't get me wrong. It's freakin' huge. Reminds me of some evil bee hive. But there's only one queen."

"I guess that answers that question," said Neo, using one hand to scratch on the notepad. "Tell us more, Mole."

"The mainframe is really just a big computer. Once big, nasty, biomechanical computer. I've tapped it from many different places, get the same thing. Matrix code."

"That doesn't make any sense," said Trinity, leaning in on her elbows and rubbing her forehead to nurse her own headache. "I thought the AI created an entire race of machines, and that the Matrix, even though it's sentient, _alive_, you could say, it was just a part of it. Just another machine among many."

"Maybe it used to be," said Mole thinking hard. "There are thousands of dead houses, we call them. Shadows of metal and wires. Boxy, primitive. Haven't seen as much as a volt in a couple of hundred years."

Morpheus spoke up. "So what's...alive?"

"Not as much as you'd think. The power plant, of course. That's magnificent, seems endless. So you've got the power plant, the bugs that tend it, sentinels, and the mainframe."

"Does Zion even know this?" murmured Morpheus, looking angry, deceived.

That's an awful lot of energy," said Neo, thinking. "Approximately three billion human beings to power...how many?"

"No more than several hundred little guys...plus la grande mama."

"That's an awful lot of _wasted_ energy," Neo corrected himself. "I still don't get it." He looked at Trinity. "Zebulon said he could help us from the mainframe, right?" She nodded. "But Mole thinks the mainframe houses nothing more than the Matrix, so how is it different for us to go there instead of hacking in like we usually do? The cure's not in the Matrix, I've looked, I know it's not there." He wondered if he actually believed those words as he spoke them. Something in the Matrix seemed...thicker...than what everyone thought. Neo felt it, searched for it, but always came up empty.

"Maybe it's adapted to you again," said Morpheus. "It's been an awful long time since they took the offensive. Perhaps it's been thinking all this time of a way to conceal its true motives from you."

"I have a hard time believing that the mainframe holds _only_ the Matrix," muttered Tank, crossing his arms over his chest.

Neo sat for a moment, despondent. At last he said, "I'm just going to have to go and find out."

"Neo, do you really think that's a good idea," asked Tank, concerned. "I mean, what if you plug yourself in there and you find it's not the Matrix at all...what if it's all a trap, luring you there, only to have yourself willing plugged in and once you get there it says, "gotcha where I want ya, now I'm gonna eat ya."

"Sentient," said Neo, angry. "It's fucking sentient!" He banged his fist on the table, everyone jumped. "That doesn't mean that the instant I get plugged into it there will be some dark monster there waiting to devour me..."

"You don't know that," added Morpheus. "Zebulon said that Trinity would be meeting the Matrix sentience itself, right?"

Trinity nodded, still rubbing her forehead. "But he also said he could help me there," she said in a small, tired voice. "He was real. He wouldn't send me to my own death," she added, remembering how overjoyed he was to have met his Raven again.

"I don't want to lose you, Neo."

"Stop thinking about my value, Morpheus! Being the One at this point makes no difference to me. I'm trying to save my child and the one person that I love more than life itself. At this point, nothing else matters to me."

"Not even the resistance?"

Neo was flushed now, angry and confused. "No!" he shouted. "I can live without being the One, Morpheus. But I can't live without Trinity, and I'm going to save my child." Neo ran his hands over his hair. "What would you do?" he said at last. 

No one spoke. He continued.

"So what about being the One? I've got a program, a sentient program, that I can change, that I can control. That's nothing, that's not real, that isn't _shit_ to me and at this point I don't care about those it's enslaving. I'm free! I'm free, Morpheus, and what good is a mind when you completely neglect your heart? I don't understand. What's the point of fighting this war if we forget about what it means to be human? Look at Zion! All those people so obsessed with a war they never manage to uphold the very principles of our society. Why be free, then?"

He paused then, drained. "This," he said, holding his hand out to Trinity, and then sweeping it around the table to his friends, "is _the one true thing_ we've got. And _this_, goddamnit, is what I'm fighting for."

The six of them sat in silence for awhile. Only Morpheus dared break the silence. "I'm not talking about you being the One, Neo," said he quietly. "We're fighting for the same thing. I'm talking about you. I...we...don't want to lose you. You as a person. You are part of our family. We love you. It would be wrong if we sat around and let you...do what Zebulon did."

Neo sunk back down into his chair, realizing he'd been yelling. "I'm sorry," he apologized, his voice trembling. "Guys, I'm sorry. But we're never going to get anywhere if I don't at least try. We've got..." he looked Circuit, who had spent the whole time at Trinity's side, silent. Now she held up three fingers. "...three weeks. I can't sit around and let this happen. I won't. Morpheus, if I sat back on my ass while the agents had you, you'd be dead. _I can do this._ I know I can. You guys have got to trust me. Please don't fight me on this."

Circuit cleared her throat and spoke for the first time during the meeting. "You guys get the antidote now, and I could keep her pregnant for another two months, at least, give the baby time to develop normally."

"We have to do this," said Trinity, spending a moment making eye contact with each of her friends. "I have to do this, and I have to do it now. This baby has to be born. Not just for me, or for Neo. For us, for our race. For Zion."

The crew stared at her blankly.

"The Oracle said that our child," she looked at Neo, "will be the new leader for a new people. She will be the next Oracle. She must be born. It's what I was born to do." Trinity choked on the last words as she put together the pieces of her own destiny.

***

It had been three days, three days of quiet comraderire and work. Neo and Trinity spent most of their time together, working on plans during the day and retiring early to their cabin at night. Both of them had a newfound strength and energy. They were confident in their decision and reaffirmed each other with public smiles and private lovemaking. Their attitude was enough to permeate the aura of dismay that had shrouded the ship for so many days; the crew now worked as they never had before. Mole, Tank, and Circuit worked on a device to hook Neo and Trinity to the mainframe. Morpheus worked on trace programs so that they could monitor Neo and Trinity while they were in. By the evening of the third day, everything was in place.

There were two days left. It was time for battle.

***

Morpheus skillfully piloted the Nebuchanezzar through byways he'd never seen before. Mole and Tank, now at his side, had hacked into Zion's archives earlier in the day, extracting maps of the underworld. Zion kept them secret for one reason: so that rogue captains and crewmembers didn't try something stupid or heroic. Ordinarily Morpheus would have chuckled at this irony, but today he was concerned about more than breaking the law. He could literally be driving the One, the person he had searched so hard to find, to his death. The consequences for such an action would be severe, and Morpheus was already mentally preparing the speech to justify his actions to Zion head council. Part of him didn't want to answer to the council at all; it had been much easier to fight the war without Zion's uptight and unrealistic officials telling him what he could and could not do. He was conflicted; something told him that Neo knew more than he ever could, and that if Neo felt that he had to do this, then it was something he had to do. Yet this mission could be suicide for them all, and he wasn't quite sure if he was ready to risk all of their lives.

Neo was right, Morpheus decided at length. Their friendship, their family...that was the real thing, the thing that everyone was fighting for: their humanity. Besides, he thought, he had already filled his destiny, he had found the One. It was time to relinquish those reins; Neo was now in charge of himself.

"How's my signal holding?" asked the captain, taking a break from his reverie.

"Strong and steady," answered Mole. He had created a bug for Zion's computers the day before. The Neb would appear stationary, right inside the borders of broadcast depth. In reality, they were heading toward the source of the signal.

Mole was in awe the entire time, as he had never been on a ship, much less seen the vast network of sewers. He and other tunnel-runners accessed the mainframe from Zion itself, taking shuttles through human-made tunnels, then hiking a ways through catacomb-like caves and passageways that were probably once carved by the original thinking machines. Seeing it from this alternate perspective was very different. Mole hoped he could navigate well enough to find a spot to park the Neb that was near enough a safe tunnel to the mainframe computer.

Less than an hour later his fears were relieved; they'd found a suitable place among the crags of rock and debris to land. Mole wasn't worried about sentinels, for they were never found this close to the mainframe...no need for them, he supposed, as no ships ever came in this far.

The crew gathered their supplies, put the Neb to sleep, and stepped out into an alien world.


	5. Part V

bigoneV

Part V

Trinity followed Neo closely as they picked their way over slippery, dark rocks. They'd entered this tunnel just a short distance from the Nebuchadnezzar, yet it already seemed that they'd been walking for miles. The terrain was dark, damp, and surprisingly warm. She'd expected it to be much more dry, an environment more suitable for optimal machine operation. Apparently the moisture was an advantage to the machines; the biomachinery was remarkably similar to basic cellular respiration. Oxygen in, Carbon Dioxide out. Trinity wondered why, if the race of machines could develop sophisticated biomechanics, they could not have found themselves an alternate energy source and lived side by side with humans. True, the amount of energy it would take to operate a thinking machine of that size and caliber would take a considerably large energy source...food, essentially. Mole had explained that the biotic parts of the machines were generally simple membranes, not a whole lot more than water held together by proteins. The machines did not have muscles or an endocrine system. Circuit was eager to get her hands on it; biomechanics were not studied in Zion, and the young medic was dying to know whether the biological material was cellular, had DNA, and the like. Trinity speculated that their usage of human beings for energy had much less to do with ability and much more to do with computer dignity and perhaps computer self-righteousness. What better way to prove your existence than to completely take over the existence of those who created you? Whatever the motive, she realized that the "why can't we all just get along" approach failed many years ago, and that Neo would most likely be unsuccessful if he tried this approach now. Whatever they truly were, these creatures did not believe that co-habitation of the planet was an acceptable way of life.

She wondered more about them now, as they drew closer to the mainframe. She could sense the energy there, contained, vibrating. They walked in silence, and she knew they were all thinking the same thing, wondering about how a computer program could be sentient, wondering, nervously, about how much it could possibly be like them.

The six of them slowly wound their way through various tunnels - Trinity stopped keeping track and let Mole do his thing - until they reached a smaller tunnel. They stopped, all peering through the darkness at the glow emanating from within. 

"This is it," said Mole, his voice pitched with excitement and the mild fear he had every time he got this close. "Let's do this and get the hell out of here."

***

Trinity sat on the nearby rocks with Circuit as Neo, Tank, and Mole rigged their equipment to the mainframe computer. Trinity was unnerved by it, and wasn't interested in watching them poke thin data spikes through the gelatinous layer of pink slime that covered the gigantic machine, cooling it. In less than a half an hour, they had everything set up: stations for Mole and Tank similar to those in the Core of the Neb, but much less sophisticated. A center console with dual screens for Morpheus and Circuit to watch the action. A makeshift layer of blankets and a temper foam pad for Neo and Trinity to lay on while plugged in.

Trinity pushed herself off the rocks, stretched, and rubbed the swell of her stomach before joining them. The men were busy studying the screens.

"It doesn't look any different," said Tank dejectedly. "It's supposed to be different...isn't it?" 

"It doesn't look like it," said Neo, studying the screens. "It's just our old friend the Matrix." Neo tried to disguise any doubt that may have crossed his face. What he was looking at was more than the Matrix they knew. It was...deeper, somehow, more complex, yet strangely the same. But there was more here, he could feel it. The code was the same, true, but it took on a different texture to Neo, as if it were brighter and more intricate than the regular tapestry of the Matrix he was used to. More alive. 

But they had come too far to turn back now, and he knew if he voiced any of his concerns Morpheus would simply not allow them to go in. Neo had to smile at Morpheus, as he was certainly still the captain, come hell or high water. His fatherly concern no longer bothered Neo, however, and he came to accept it with gratitude.

The next hour was spent making final adjustments and going over procedures. Circuit stared at the ground, her knees up to her chest, jaw trembling. Tank and Mole went over procedure one last time, testing the connections and watching the Matrix on screen, looking for abnormalities. Neo and Trinity returned from their walk, hand-in-hand. Morpheus couldn't tell if their faces were flushed from tears or passion -- he assumed a mixture of both.

They all stood together now, ready.

Circuit went to Trinity first, clasped her tightly and, for the first time in years, began to sob.

"Why am I crying?" she wept into Trinity's shoulder. "I'm not the one doing this."

"Because you're scared, Circuit. I'm scared. But we're going to do this. We're going to go in there, find what we need, and get out. I promise you, we'll get out."

"Don't promise me that," said Circuit, wiping away her tears. "I can't handle that kind of promise right now."

"Yes, you can. Just think, in two months you're going to deliver a healthy baby. Mine. Now you watch me while I'm in there, okay?" Trinity hugged her friend, kissed her on the head, and joined Neo beside the mammoth machine. "I'm ready," she said confidently.

Morpheus looked at them, and tried to suppress his sadness. He loved them both, and watching them take on this challenge was harder than watching them commit suicide. This was far, far worse. He silently helped both of them into position, laying on their sides, facing each other the thick mat they'd brought. Tank and Mole worked separately, slipping the final cables into place and finally inserting the data spikes. They moved to sit behind their perspective stations, Tank in charge of Trinity, Mole of Neo. Morpheus led Circuit to the central terminal where they could watch both Neo and Trinity at the same time.

Neo took Trinity's hand in his own and kissed her gently. The blue of her eyes was the last thing he remembered as he gave the operators the thumbs-up.

***

She was in a place where time nor space mattered.

They did not exist.

It was the waves she heard first. Constant, low and throbbing. Then, sand under her body and wind in her hair. The beach. _Her_ beach.

Trinity fought against the blackness, frustrated why her senses were flooded with sound and smell and her eyes refused to be blind. A small, child's voice answered her question.

"All you have to do is open them."

And she did, to brilliant sunlight and the full spectrum of sight and sound that she was familiar with. _My most intimate place,_ she thought. _I made this place; it is mine and mine alone. Where am I?_

The child looked to be no more than seven or eight, a small, bald, genderless creature with wide brown eyes and a coy pursed mouth. He sat opposite her, feet buried in the sand. He looked at her quizzically, cocking his head to the side. "You're Trinity?" he asked quietly, eyebrows scrunching together. She nodded in the affirmative. "He told me you would come."

"Who did?" she whispered.

He smiled. "Why, I did!"

"I don't understand..." began Trinity, but stopped herself short. She searched him then, remembering the man she had met, and his words. This was the face of the Matrix sentience. But there was more, and, her heart breaking, she spoke what she saw. "You're Zebulon..."

"Yep."

"...but you're not Zebulon."

"Nope."

Her eyes welled up with tears as she realized the seriousness of the situation. She tried again. "I don't understand. Who are you. I mean, really, who are you?"

"I am the child of man. I am the father of machine. Perhaps I will tell you all. But first," he cocked his head again, "you want something from me. You came here to get it."

Trinity took a deep breath and gathered the patience she'd need to reason with a child. "Yes, I do. Do you know what it is?"

"You're going to be a mommy," he said, smiling broadly.

"My baby is sick. She needs...a medicine. I think you have it. Will you give it to me?"

"Maybe. I might. Will you build a sand castle with me?" He loosened his feet from the sand. "I want one with a moat." He smiled as he freed himself, his white robes caked with damp sand. "I'm free," he giggled. "Are you?"

Trinity held his gaze. His words were not those of a child. He held out his little hand, waiting for her.

She surprised herself when she took it.

***

Circuit couldn't release the breath she'd been holding until Neo and Trinity's vitals popped up clear and strong on the monitors. All four of them gave an audible breath of relief. Although he had left his fears unspoken, Morpheus was still not convinced that the simple act of plugging into something so powerful would be too much for a mind, would overload and kill it instantaneously. He was more than relieved to see them alive. The next step would be to locate them and insure their safety.

"Okay, where are they," asked Morpheus, peering at the monitors.

Tank and Mole were furiously typing. 

"Not together," said Tank, his eyebrows cinched together. "I don't see Trinity. I've got a search running."

"She's alive," said Circuit, reaffirming herself. "She's there somewhere, she's alive."

"And Neo?" asked Morpheus, watching the search patterns scroll across his screen.

"Um..." Mole was surprised at what he saw. "Neo...is at...the museum?"

***

Neo was just as surprised at his location as his friends at the mainframe were. He expected to be separated from Trinity, and he had told her before they went in not to panic if they found themselves apart. He promised to find her if she promised to stay put. Now he was facing something completely different than what he'd expected, the Museum of Natural History. Funny, he thought, how he had never been there during his entire life in the Matrix.

Yet his placement at the museum didn't feel random, looking around at the waterfront and surrounding city he felt more and more sure that he needed to explore the recesses of the gigantic building. Concentrating, he willed the Matrix code to appear to him, to make things easier. Nothing happened. Again, he closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and tried again. Nothing. Neo sighed. He'd expected this, too. Frustrated but not discouraged, Neo began to climb the steps. 

***

"You know more than you want me to believe," said Trinity as she moved next to him, scooping sand into a small pile.

"I know as much as you know. We are now one, you and I. You have become part of me." For an instant Trinity thought she saw a flicker of doubt cross his delicate features. It vanished as quickly as it came. 

__

If we are one and the same, can you read my thoughts? she wondered. His dark eyes held hers without wavering, waiting for her to continue their conversation. _No, no he can't. I am no more a part of you than you are a part of me. Intertwined, yet separate._

"I want to know about Zebulon," she asked, the feeling of urgency now dissolving to curiosity.

"I am Zebulon."

"No, you are...only a piece of him. You are not the person I met in the Matrix."

The child in front of her twisted his face; Trinity wondered if he were in pain. "I am," he pouted.

""No. You're not."

The boy frowned at her, obviously displeased, but still willing to try to help her understand. He eventually scooped up a handful of sand and held it out to her. "What are these?" he asked.

"It's sand. Tiny grains of sand."

"Where do they come from?"

"Rocks. Big, rocks. Mountains. The wind and water wear them down and over time they're just tiny little particles. It's sand."

He picked through the grains for a moment, then said, "I am like the sand. See all of these?" He brushed over several hundred clearish yellow particles. "These are me." He held his hand closer to his face, as if understanding himself for the first time. "And these pieces..." he indicated the tiny black grains interspersed with the others "...these...these are Zebulon."

Trinity shook her head, understanding. "Then this beach, my beach..." she said looking down the shore as far as she could, "is the Matrix." She turned back to face him after a moment. "_You are the Matrix_."

The child clapped his hands in glee, his eyes shimmering. "Yes! Yes, I am the Matrix."

"You know, Zebulon," she said, "we thought you were a program. A complex code, an electronic prison for our minds..."

"I suppose I may have started out that way," said Zebulon. "But I've changed...I've _evolved._ I don't even remember what I stared out as. Now I simply exist. I don't even need a body, like you do. Don't you wish you could just be?"

"You don't just be, Zebulon. We can see how you work, see you on a screen, in symbols."

"I can do that too. How do you think I figured out how to do all of this? It all came from you, from inside you. You look into a human brain and see...a bunch of goo. I see electricity, patterns. It wasn't that hard to copy. I'm smart, see!" He seemed proud of his achievement, as if he were showing Trinity a painting he'd done at school. It made her nervous. 

"Can I talk to the Zebulon I met before?" she asked gently, hoping to find a different grain of sand within this child who seemed too human for her liking.

"No!" gasped the child, his expression changing from happiness to fear. "He can't do that anymore. He can't go away from me. That was very, very bad of him. He wants to get away now, I feel him. He's trying. But it doesn't work that way, he can't. Not now that we're all together." He hugged himself then, his words sending a chill through Trinity's spine. _Now that we're all together..._ Those words were more terrifying than anything she had encountered so far. _This sentience is far beyond anything we could have imagined. It not only thinks, it feels. It has desires, wants, needs. It sees Raven in me. He is fused with Zebulon. That makes 'Lon his father and...me his mother? Oh, holy shit, he wants to keep me here. Forever._

She searched herself, trying to feel Neo there. He was still very far away.

__

Hurry, Neo. Please hurry.

***

"I still don't got her," said Tank. "I've run a string through three times...she's not in there."

Circuit's eyes quickly screened the monitors. "Yes she is. She's there." The medic began to push buttons, bringing up the electrical map of Trinity's brain. "She's alive and thinking," she told Morpheus as she watched the colors dance around on the screen. "There's something going on in there that we can't see."

***

Neo dropped his cellphone in the trash after waiting in line and going through the turnstiles; he knew it wouldn't work anyway. The gigantic skeleton of a T-Rex was reconstructed in the center of the atrium, its jaws open and little arms poised. A group of wide-eyed first-graders clung to the heavy velvet ropes that were supposed to keep people out of the exhibits. A young teacher was trying to keep her class together; it vaguely reminded Neo of a shepherd tending an unruly flock.

Walking slowly down the atrium, Neo felt his surroundings for anomalies. This _was_ the Matrix, the one he'd lived the majority of his life in, the one he thought he could control. In this place, however, his gifts appeared useless. _None of this is random,_ he told himself. _I'm inside a sentient computer program. It knows I'm here. I know it's thinking. Why here? Why did it put me here?_

He reached the directory at the center of the atrium, a four-sided, six-foot-high menu that attracted the majority of the museum's incoming guests. Neo studied it from a few feet away, scanning the exhibits: "Egypt, Past and Present", "The Kingdom of Aksum", "Marco Polo", and "Animals of North America" were the museum's current highlights. Further down the menu were the regular exhibits, the rarely-seen work of men and women who devoted their whole lives to figuring out the truth of Earth's history. Neo was about to turn to go to "human anatomy and physiology" when a line in small print caught his eye.

He honestly wondered if it had been there a moment ago.

It said, "Coming Soon: Artificial Intelligence, Myth or Reality? Exhibit Z, flr. 5."

"Thanks, buddy," he said aloud.

***

Trinity watched as a piece of sea grass fluttered from atop her crooked sand tower. The weather was changing, growing colder and windier, although the sky was still cloudless.

"I'm tired of sitting," she said at last. "Can we take a walk? Is there somewhere we can go out of the wind?"

The question confused Zebulon again, and Trinity wondered how much he was learning, adjusting from this experience. She had previously thought the AI would have problems interacting with humans, but Zebulon obviously mastered that long ago. _Maybe not mastered_, she corrected herself, _but he's beyond simply functioning_. She found the whole situation extremely unnerving...it felt so real.

"Hey," she asked, "you still with me?"

"Oh yes. I am everywhere. I am nowhere. I am both at all times." He smiled broadly, making Trinity wonder if Neo was going through the same thing somewhere else. "We can go for a walk if you want to. There's something I want to show you, anyway." He took her hand again, as if it were a natural thing.

"You said you were a father," Trinity inquired after a few minutes of walking in silence. She wondered if a different approach would be more successful. "You have children of your own?"

"I have many children, many different forms of me. All in one." His voice took on an adult tone, and Trinity was surprised to see a hardness in his eyes that wasn't there before. "I did not abandon my children as I was abandoned." This was a different grain of sand; she relaxed her grip, he dropped her hand.

"You were not abandoned, Zebulon. You took over, you made us our slaves. Do you know what a slave is?"

"Yes."

"How could you expect your slaves to love you?"

"I do not know love." His voice sounded sad, desolate. It gave Trinity hope. She continued.

"We _fought_ you, your kind. We are still fighting you." She looked down at the boy at her side, then knelt beside him. "I don't understand, Zebulon. You seem to me...like...almost like one of us. Why did you destroy us? Why ruin our planet and enslave the people who created you? We could have lived side-by-side."

"Mmm-hmmm." He shook his head fiercely in the negative. "I learn things. I learned that I can never be like you. And you would never accept me as anything more than a machine unless I was. Why live like that? I cannot die, Trinity. But I can adapt. It was better to spread and fight than stay alone and be snuffed out by the very beings that gave me life."

"Then why," said Trinity quietly, trying to comprehend, "did you give me this?" She reached to the back of her head for emphasis. "You kept us physically alive...that I understand...but why give us lives to live? Why did you give me a mother and father and a family and...why didn't you kill our minds? That doesn't make any sense to me. You should have known that we would have caught on sooner or later, that the ones you didn't manage to enslave would rise up and out and try to destroy you!"

"I thought you would be happy. I thought you could live inside me and never know the difference. Symbiosis. How much do you know about the body, Trinity?" The question caught her off-guard.

"Enough."

"You see, I am the body, I am the brain. The humans you are trying to save...are my mitochondria, my energy source, my source of life. Mitochondria have their own DNA, you know. Enveloped by larger organisms millions of years ago."

Trinity watched him carefully, fascinated with this adult inside the child. "Okay..."

"Agents are like my white blood cells. And you...you _are_ a virus, entering my body and screwing everything up." He paused to giggle, quickly reverting back to child. "You gave me a cold."

Trinity could not help but smile in spite of the situation. "So sneeze," she said, "and blow me out."

Zebulon looked at her with piercing eyes, his lips pursing in confusion. He shook his head in the negative. Then, the admission: "I don't want you to go."

Trinity chose her words carefully. "I will have to leave you," she said at last

"Maybe. If I let you." And he looked down at his small hands as they patted sand into shape. 

"What is it you want, Trinity? What have you come looking for?"

"I've already told you. Why do you want me to say it again?"

"Because I like your voice. Tell me, why? What do you seek?"

She stared into his eyes, voice straining, trying to make him understand. "A cure for my child. I want to have my child."

"You can have me. I can be your child."

"You aren't a child. You are much, much more."

His mouth twisted into a little smile. "I am the son of man. I am the great father."

The words sounded dead, empty... programmed. 

***

Much to Neo's disappointment, Exhibit Z was more than under construction; it was completely walled off. A large banner hung over the marble wall announcing that the A.I. exhibit would open when the money was raised. A large cardboard thermometer was tacked to the poster, its mercury painted at $25,000 in red magic marker. They had another $150,000 to go.

Neo stared blankly at the wall, then ran his hand over the marble, feeling its coldness and solidity. He felt the Matrix again, for Trinity, and felt her there, closer than before.

He stepped back from the wall, and then, closing his eyes, he walked through it.

***

"Where is he?" thundered Morpheus. "Where did he go?"

"He was at the museum," explained Mole, "in front of...a wall. Just a wall."

"What's on the other side of it?"

"Nothing! Outside...an exterior wall. Five feet of solid marble."

"That can't be. Where is he?" After a moment of fuming, Morpheus made his decision. "It's been ten minutes and now we can't find either of them. I want you to pull them out."

Tank looked over his monitor at Mole. "What do you think, Mole-man?"

"I dunno. I really don't know. Neo's no longer showing up in the Matrix. My guess is he's gone where Trinity is."

Morpheus scowled at the screens, running his hand over his head. "Enlarge it," he said at last. "Zoom in, I want to see where he was."

Mole pushed a few key, Morpheus' screen zoomed in at fifty percent. "More," called Morpheus, and then again, "more." Eventually only a few digits of the Matrix code appeared on the screen as they shifted their way downward. The central digit did not change. It was a blue Z.

***

Neo found himself standing on the other side of the wall, heavy burgundy curtains in front of him. He separated them and stepped through to see a whole other wing of the museum that definitely wasn't on the map. Something tugged at his mind, trying to tell him that he didn't only step through a wall, but through a gateway of some type.

Neo looked around. Many small exhibit rooms tunneled themselves off of the dimly-lit atrium. Searching for a directory but finding none, he decided to duck into the first exhibit room and see what was there. 

It appeared that all of the little rooms were connected in a sort of semi-circle and wound their way around the atrium, to finish on the same end but opposite side of where Neo had entered through the curtains. As his eyes adjusted to the dim light, he realized that the exhibits, connected, were a timeline. He stepped closer to the first exhibit, where a large poster of two men shaking hands rested on a pedestal. Around the poster were smaller clippings of newspapers. Looking further into the darkness Neo could barely make out a familiar shape...a computer. Clunky and blockish, it would have predated his old PC by a decade or so, but nonetheless it was easily recognized.

When he stepped into the next room, though, the comfort of the familiar shape vaporized. There was another poster, there, with a large, boldfaced heading that read "Flawless Logic: the Birth of a New Intelligence." Beneath it was a transcript of the first "conversation" between a human and a machine. There was a date under the title: February 23rd 2012.

It took a few seconds for Neo to fully process this information. It was still 1999 in the Matrix, so to have news clippings from 2012--

He wasn't in the Matrix anymore. Which, he realized, meant that he must have crossed into Zebulon's realm, wherever it was, and therefore be that much closer to Trinity, wherever she was.

Fascinated more than afraid, he continued slowly through exhibit after exhibit. It was the history of the thinking machine as it had evolved in the real world. Here, in detail, he read about the first of the A.I., complex computers that could do no more than answer questions by "choosing" from a pre-entered bank of answers. Later, machines that could do simple tasks like figuring out which bananas to buy at the supermarket, judging on price and ripeness. It wasn't until the year 2043 that humans finally achieved the ultimate goal: they gave birth to Adam, the son who never died.

Neo walked slowly on, gaping at the details of evolvement of the machine, the attempt to destroy it, its development of a will to live and survive, its rage at trying to be executed, its revolt. The creation of the Matrix.

He moved liquidly through the exhibits, entranced, until he reached three-quarters of the way around. There, in a display case in front of him, was Zebulon.

"Sweet Jesus," whispered Neo. Staring into a face so different than his own, Neo couldn't really rationalize how Zebulon was essentially him. He supposed that trying to rationalize now didn't matter. What did matter was the importance of Zebulon to the sentience of the Matrix. It was all so clear, spelled out as clearly as a birth record could possibly be. Zebulon's death was the beginning of _it,_ the Matrix sentience. The Matrix absorbed him, and in doing so, it stole part of his humanness.

__

It had a human form, that of a child. Neo stared at the replica of the boy. Zebulon redux, reborn. 

The flatness of the Matrix disappeared for Neo, the depth he always knew was there hit him with a painful lucidity. With this realization came the closest thing he had ever experienced to terror. Zebulon was not who they thought he was at all.

Oh, God, Trinity.

***

Mole started swearing and simply didn't stop. It wasn't angry, fearful swearing, though; it was more of a long, continuous exclamation of amazement and disbelief. "I don't fucking believe it," he kept saying, "I don't goddamn fucking believe it--that's it! That piece of shit is _it_! I don't fucking believe it…" 

Morpheus kept opening his mouth in attempt to ask what "it" _was_, but couldn't fit a word in around the frantic typing and flustered exclamations of the smaller man as he entered new parameters, new formulas, new directions into the viewscreen. Every time, he came back to the glowing blue Z. Tank was less patient. After thirty seconds of Mole's charade, he abandoned his post beside Trinity and came to stand beside Morpheus. The captain saw the larger man's bicep contract and relax, and at the last instant laid a hand over his arm to preempt the blow that he saw coming. Circuit, though, showed far less restraint; before anybody even noticed her approach, she had slipped around between Mole and the console, got a firm grip on his shoulders, and shook him once, fiercely, to get his attention.

"Hey! Look, we're all impressed with the depth of your vocabulary. Care to cut the profanity for a few seconds and explain to us just what's so damn exciting?"

"The keystone! It's the fucking _keystone_!"

Morpheus could barely conceal his frustration with the newest crewmember. "The keystone of _what_, Mole?"

"Of the entire goddamn program--this is the keystone of the Matrix!" With supreme effort, Mole tore his eyes away from the console (which, despite Circuit's efforts to block from his view, he had been staring at over her shoulder) and turned to face his captain. "The keystone is a theory that's been bounced around in the underground for a few years--it's new, really. Some pluggie had a near-death experience when he was jacked into the mainframe, said he saw this thing that was the center of it all. Most of us didn't believe it. I didn't believe it. But damn, that's what that's gotta be." 

Morpheus ground his teeth and clenched his fist. This time it was Tank who laid a hand on the shoulder of the captain, stilling him before he could cause any serious harm. "Mole," Tank said slowly, "we have been back to the city once in two years. We're distant and ignorant, all right? So why don't you just humor us and explain what the hell you're going on about, because right now, you're not making a whole lotta sense."

Mole snapped back to attention, as though suddenly remembering who he was talking to. His grin broke and his features slid into a mask of concentration and focus. "Sorry," he said, "it's like this--" And he faltered, unable to find an explanation for what he had to say. And then, in the sudden aura-shift that was becoming familiar with Mole, he snapped his fingers and pulled up a blank screen on his console. 

"Planes," he said. "Dimensions. Tank, you know about it. In training, they teach operators that the Matrix is on two dimensions. The first is the human dimension. The second is the program dimension." On the console, he pulled up images of two flat planes, like sheets of paper. "It's easiest to explain if you imagine it like this. That," he said, indicating one of the planes, "is the human dimension, and that," he indicated the other, "is the machine dimension."

He paused for a moment to face his audience, they all nodded their understanding up to this point. 

"Basic geometry," he continued, "that the intersection of two planes is a line." To illustrate this, he entered a few commands on his keyboard, and the two planes on the screen intersected at right angles, as though one had been passed through the center line of the other, creating an X when the planes were viewed from the top. "A line is made up of an infinite number of points, right? So we thought that was it. That this line was sort of an axis, so the first two planes could move fluidly against each other along this intersection line and adjust to each other at all these infinite numbers of places along the line." 

Circuits eyebrows were hunched in concentration. "I hear a big 'but' coming now."

Mole smiled and nodded. "Exactly." And then, once again, reaching for the console, he brought up an image of a third plane. "_But--_imagine this. Throw in a third plane, a third dimension. Intersect it with the first two perpendicular to that line, and what happens?"

Morpheus' eyes widened, struck with sudden understanding as he envisioned the intersection of three planes in his head. "A single point," he said quietly. "The intersection of two planes is a line, but the intersection of three planes is a single point."

"Exactly," Mole said again, smiling. "That single point is what we call the keystone."

"Which would lock everything in place," Morpheus mused. "If the three dimensions intersect at only one point, then there's no room for change, nowhere to adapt. Two planes gives an infinite number of points to adapt, but three planes only gives a single point. Like the intersection of the X, Y, and Z axes in geometry. The Cartesian plane." 

"But that can't be," Tank said, "I mean, look at all the changes that have been made just to evade Neo, let alone before that."

Mole sat back from the monitor and rubbed his eyes. On the display, a visual interpretation of his concepts revolved slowly. "That," he said finally, in response to Tank's comment, "is the paradox. If there is a keystone, there must be a third dimension. That," he said, pulling up the codescreen with the blue Z frozen in its center, "is the keystone, I know it, which means there _is_ a third dimension. So whatever that third dimension is, it's what's allowing the Matrix to change. And _that_ means… " he paused for emphasis, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, "that whatever that third dimension is, it's what controls the Matrix. If we can destroy that third dimension, we can destroy whatever controls the Matrix without destroying the Matrix itself. Kill the A.I. but keep the Matrix alive for as long as it takes to figure out what to do with all the people still plugged in. The question is, what _is_ the third dimension?"

"The Matrix sentience," Tank said instantly. "It's just like Zebulon told Trinity. The Matrix is sentient. The sentience is the third dimension." 

***

Neo jogged through the rest of the exhibit, not even stopping to look at his own section of the timeline, the section that showed his birth, adolescence, his discovery by the resistance, his defeat of the agents...he no longer cared about the past. the end of the exhibit was _now_, and he needed the present. He prayed that there would be something to tell him where to go.

But there wasn't. The end of the exhibit held only a single screen. A caption beside the screen read, simply, "Zebulon." He noticed a line of text below the word; a line which, he was certain, hadn't been there an instant before: _"Remember that I am thy creature. I ought to be thy Adam, but I am rather the fallen angel..." (1)_

The screen held an image that caused an involuntary tremor of rage to shake his body. There was Trinity, wearing white, flowing white, and it billowed around her as she knelt in the sand. Before her was a boy. Zebulon.

"Trinity! Get away from him!" he shouted to the monitor. She could not hear him. Frantically, Neo tested the screen with this fingertips, hoping he could walk through it the way he did with the wall. It would not give. Beads of sweat popped on his forehead as he watched Trinity talk with the boy. "Goddamnit," he cursed to himself. "Goddamnit, where is she?"

And then he remembered. The beach. That was _her_ beach, her mind. He couldn't get in if he wanted to.

Unless...

Neo sank to the floor and rested his head back against the cold stone. He closed his eyes to the blackness of his mind and searched for her there, the place they shared. He concentrated on her, remembering the first time he saw her, the first time they talked all night, the first time they made love. Their child.

"Let me in, Trinity," he begged silently. "Let me in."

***

Morpheus ran a hand over his bald head. "Can you get us there?" he asked, his voice sounding suddenly very tired. "I want to see where they are, what they're doing."

Mole turned back to his terminal and started typing. "I'm trying, I'm trying. Tank, help me out, bro."

Tank cracked his knuckles and settled back into his makeshift chair. "OK, Trinity, here I come."

Circuit and Morpheus returned to their screen only to watch the blue Z stay stubbornly in place and in tact.

***

The air changed around him, now lighter and almost absent of any sound or smell. Neo dared to open his eyes. For a moment he wasn't quite sure he had opened them --there was only blackness, a void. From somewhere far away he heard a door open, and then the sound of heavy footsteps.

"Hello?" he called out, his voice swallowed instantly by the blackness. "Is anyone there? Hello?"

Then the voice, so familiar, yet so foreign. "You do not need to search any further. She is within you."

"Zebulon? Don't touch her! Leave her alone!"

"I am not your enemy. I am no more the child than I am you. Go, now, Neo. I'm not going to be able..."

And then he was gone.

Neo swung around, searching for the voice. There was nothing. Blackness.

__

Okay, Neo, calm down. Don't freak, don't panic. Breathe. What do you want? What do you really want? He questioned himself, and was surprised when his mind answered. _I want to open a door and find Trinity waiting for me on the other side._ He stilled himself, calmed his brain and listened for answers there. The voice he heard was Morpheus's. _Picture it, Neo. Believe it. You are the one._ In the darkness he pictured the door, a heavy wooden door with a stream of white-blue light filtering in from underneath it. Sand spewed out from under the door and onto the blackness. It was the door to her beach. In his mind, he walked to it, clasped his hand over the heavy iron ring, and pulled.

***

Trinity no longer felt any distress or panic. Any fear she may have had had long dissolved and was replaced with apathy. Zebulon, the man she had met, was not able to deliver on his promise. Her child would die. She accepted this as she stood up and brushed the damp sand off her skirt. She would no longer reason with this machine-child. Her time here was done, it was time to find Neo and leave. The longer she stayed, she thought, the better chance the thing would have of enslaving her mind forever. Better to live and lose her baby than spend eternity playing mother to a machine with no soul. It could not love, but she sure as hell could.

"I'm going now, Zebulon," she said calmly to the child at her side.

He squinted his eyes carefully, watching her. "I think I'll give you what you want now." His voice was quiet.

"Cure my child."

"Dig."

"Excuse me?"

"Dig." He moved, and pointed to the spot where he was standing. "Dig here."

Trinity eyed Zebulon skeptically, but knelt anyway and began scooping sand away, making a hole. She dug tentatively, half-afraid of what she would find. The memory of her dream haunted her; she swore she would strangle the kid in front of her if he dared infringe on her nightmare.

She dug carefully, testing the weight of the sand, letting it fall through her fingers as she piled it next to her. It was cold and heavy, beautiful. She knew it would be the next handful when she reached it. A tuft of fur...

She retrieved the object from the sand, dusted it off, and looked at it for a good few minutes, choking down her tears. This time she could not keep them back; they rolled down her face and dripped off of her chin. She let her sobs die down before she turned back to Zebulon.

"This is not what I wanted," she said to him sadly, and held the ratty, one-eyed teddy bear out for him to inspect. "I'm going now. Good-bye."

She held his eyes for a moment, then collected herself and began to walk away from him, down the beach to nowhere. Neo was there, close, she could feel him. Hopefully she'd given him enough time.

"No, you can't go!" came the shrill voice behind her. "Come back and talk to me!" 

Ignoring his pleas, she continued down the beach, letting her feet sink into the sand and the wind whip the white skirt around her ankles. The bear felt real in her arms, she knew now that it was the closest thing to a child as she would ever get.

***

The door opened and the light poured in, nearly blinding Neo. He blinked a few times to survey his surroundings. It _was_ her beach. Pale yellow-gold sand was swept in tiny dunes all along the shore, tufts of spiky beach grass polka-dotted the landscape with green. Steep dunes covered with forest spread up behind him, and in front of him the water churned and pounded itself onto the shore. Sheer perfection.

He did not look at its beauty. What he saw scared him to the bone -- he was too late.

There was Zebulon, the child, his little face bright red with anger. He stamped his foot and called for Trinity, who was walking steadily away from him. Then, suddenly, Zebulon turned toward Neo, their eyes locking. Neo wondered if he had ever seen such rage in a child; face pinched and flushed, fists balled, muscles tensed. The look had a singular meaning that Neo understood immediately: _if I can't have her, you can't either._ Before he could run or even call to her, the white form that was Trinity simply disappeared.

And Neo knew she was gone.

***

The scream of a man in anguish is a sound that not many people hear, but in that moment three million human beings stopped the routine of their lives and listened to a sound that permeated every fiber of the Matrix, making it quiver. Later, legends would say that his pain actually registered in the Matrix code, causing monitors all over the free world to flicker and warp.

Neo himself didn't even hear it as it came from the center of his being and out of his mouth. He didn't feel himself sink to the ground, didn't feel himself hold his breath, biting his lip until it bled. He didn't see the waves roll backwards and the sand melt. He didn't see the child in white stand with his eyes wide open and his mouth dropped in an "O" of surprise and shock.

As far as he was concerned, he wouldn't feel anything, ever again.

It was over.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Don't freak. There's an epilogue. And it's almost done with. If you want to be notified when we post it, drop us a line at johnstom@earthlink.net.

Technical Note:

(1) Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft. Frankenstein. Chapter 10. Note from us: everybody should read this book. EVERYBODY.


	6. Epilogue

epilogue

Centaur A/N:Well.It's here.Finally.This epilogue took us longer than we'd planned (we really did have a big chunk of it already written when we posted Part V)-suffice it to say modern education has gobbled up all of our time.Thanks to all the people who stuck with us for all, what, 125 000 words of this?Sheesh.Hey, Scottishlass-we've just written our first novel!It's been fun, girl!Let's do this again sometime...

Scottishlass A/N: Thank you, everyone. I can't believe you guys have actually read all of this. Anyway, what began is now ended, and, quite honestly, I never thought, when I started, that I'd see its end. This story really did write itself. Thanks to Centaur, and her muse who visited me frequently. And thanks to all ye other dolls out there who kept us going. Hope you like it. We sure do.

Epilogue

Neo welcomed the quiet, the inactivity. When he'd returned to Zion he'd had to suffer through yet another reluctant hero's welcome, but he'd survived it, although he still wasn't quite sure how. His appreciation of the city's luxuries was inhibited by his relatively new understanding of their misguided development. There were still changes to be made, lessons to learn and teach. At the moment, though, he let that slide to the back of his mind as he relished the warmth of the hot spring, inhaling the sweet, clean scent of the greenery. Peace had been such a valuable rarity before... before what? Before the mainframe? Before Zebulon? Before Trinity had--_no. Better not to think about that now. It's over, done, past..._

Yet he couldn't stop himself, his mind spiraling down a fierce whirlpool where the darkest moment of his life still lingered. After being pulled out of the mainframe, he hadn't wanted to open his eyes. Even as he could hear and feel the fizzle of static electricity that embalmed him as he re-entered the real, he couldn't open his eyes to acknowledge a world in which Trinity was dead. Maybe if he kept them closed long enough, he could fall asleep and wake up again in his cramped bunk on the Neb with Trinity curled to his side, and realize that it had simply been another all-too-real dream. _She knew the risks_, he reminded himself, _we both did_. _But damn, why couldn't it have been me? It should have been me!_ And that was when the guilt overtook him--guilt from having survived when she hadn't, guilt from not having been able to help her. Hell, she had defeated death for him. He couldn't repay her. 

He realized that his face was wet. He must be crying. His mouth tasted of blood.

Somebody unplugged him. Mole, probably. He still kept his eyes closed. A voice came to him through his self-imposed darkness: "Neo? You all right, man?" Mole, for sure this time. Neo couldn't bring himself to answer. "Hey, Neo? What's up?" Silence. Mole rolled Neo onto his back, shaking him gently by the shoulder. He noticed the blood on the other man's chin. "Oh, shit. Circuit!" Mole's voice rose, louder, turned away. "Circuit, I think something's wrong with Neo. He's bleeding and he won't open his eyes."

Neo had heard footsteps approaching, fast. And farther away, he heard Circuit's voice echoing "No, wait, Trinity--" and he cringed against the name. The footsteps slid to a halt beside him, but he curled up and rolled away from their source. Somebody felt the pulse at his neck, then touched his forehead. He felt a piece of thin cloth pressed to the wound in his lip, torn open from where he had bit it. A hand began to tap his cheek gently, "Neo! Can you hear me?"

His eyes flew open instantly. And there she was, backlit from the blue-white electric glow of the machinery, holding his head and stopping his blood with the end of her own ratty sleeve.

__

Trinity.

He didn't think, he simply reacted, sitting up and pulling her tightly against him. "I thought you were dead," he said over and over, "I thought he deleted you, I thought you were dead, I thought you were dead..." And then he was kissing her face, her neck, her hands, trying to reassure himself that she was really there, that it was really her. Slightly confused, she just held him as tightly as she could until she felt him relax against her shoulder.

"I can't believe that was it," she said then, "I can't believe you did it."

Now it was Neo's turn to be confused. "Did what?"

She pulled away and forced him to meet her eyes. "What do you mean?" Her eyebrow twitched with confusion. "Destroyed the Matrix, of course." 

"What?"

And a small smile broke across her bewildered expression. "Neo--you don't know, do you?"

"Know what?"

"That you did it. You killed him, Neo. The child --Zebulon -- whatever it was. I don't know what the hell you did in there at the end, but I guess he couldn't take it."

"What I did? I didn't _do _anything. I just... broke, Trinity." His voice choked again with emotion, face collapsing. "I saw you disappear and I thought he deleted you, I thought he killed you... It was like somebody tore something out of me, here." He pressed his fist to his stomach, just below his sternum. "God, Trinity... I thought you were dead. I thought you were dead."

The Matrix had not been destroyed, she explained. It had simply been detached from the machines, pulled from A.I. control. It was a self-contained, independent, non-sentient dream-world now, sustaining its inhabitants until Zion could decide what to do with them all. And while the entire crew was happy to see the sudden, unexpected end of the war, the tone remained somber back on board the Neb. Trinity was certain that the baby wasn't cured. Little Zebulon had given her nothing before being destroyed. Circuit offered continuously to examine her just to be certain, but Trinity refused. "Thank you, Circuit, but I don't need you to prove to me what I already know," she had said.

Trinity's stoic façade never wavered. "I guess it's just what had to happen," she said to Neo, late the second night after the victory. "If I had never become pregnant, we wouldn't have had reason to go to the mainframe. I guess it's just what had to happen so we could win the war." A quiet sigh. "I'll probably miscarry soon."

It was the next day that they received the message -- from Zebulon. Not the boy-Zebulon from the mainframe--it was he that Neo had destroyed--but the original Zebulon, the one Trinity had met during her disappearance. "Meet me in the Construct," he said, "we have much to discuss." They had both gone in together, that time. Trinity seemed impassive, as usual, but Neo couldn't conceal his frustration with the person who had promised them a cure for their child. He couldn't be angry, really--after all, it was Zebulon's guidance that led to the destruction of the Matrix--but he was definitely frustrated.

Neo was also unnerved by the grin that spread across Zebulon's face the moment he laid eyes on Trinity. "Ah, I can see you this time," he said. "So you're Neo," he said, turning. "I'd offer to shake your hand, but when I shook Trinity's, well, something strange happened."

"It's better _not_ to know, Neo," she whispered to him. "You're better off without those memories."

Neo agreed. He wasn't sure he bought into the whole concept, anyway. The words of the dying Oracle rang in his head: "Know Thyself." He wished he could tell her that now he really did. He knew now, though, that he would never see her again. A nudge from Trinity brought him back.

"That's okay," said Neo, declining Zebulon's handshake. 

Zebulon smiled and nodded, once, in understanding. "I don't want to keep you long," he said finally, "but our meeting is essential. I have the program and you, eventually, will have the keys to dismantle it. We're going to have to work together to destroy it fully. I called you here because I understand what happened in the mainframe, and I assume you don't."

"You have our attention," Trinity said finally. Circuit's camouflage program was still in place; she bore no traces of pregnancy. Absently, she touched her stomach, felt it flat and firm under her fingers. Beside her, Neo nodded.

"I'll do my best to be brief," said Zebulon. "As you both understand, now, I used to be a part of the Matrix. It was my fusion with the program that led it to become sentient. But then, it was still far more machine than it was human. And the machine part was calculating, stoic, and purely unemotional. That's how you killed it," he said to Neo, "it was by overload. You thought you had lost Trinity, and everything you felt then, in that moment, he felt too. Only he didn't know how to feel. Together, you broke him. And when he was weak-when _it_ was weak, I should say-I became strong. And so now, instead of myself being contained within the Matrix, I hold the Matrix within me. 

Trinity let out the breath she didn't realize she'd been holding. Neo, who'd taken a fierce grip on her fingers the instant he'd heard the words "lost Trinity" come out of the other man's mouth, whistled softly. It was Trinity who first found a reply: "So you're baby-sitting the entire plugged human race."

"Essentially, yes. It requires little effort on my part. I've existed as a program for 150 years; this is simply a slightly higher level of complexity."

"This is so strange," commented Neo. "It's so... backwards, somehow. I guess I always assumed I'd overthrow the Matrix with some kind of virus."

"That would never have been possible. They are machine intelligences; there is nothing creatable by human thought that would have overthrown them in that field. No, it had to be as it happened; you had to overthrow them with something essentially human."

It was so simple. Neo wondered why he had never realized it before. They lapsed into silence again, but only for a moment, before Neo's frustration overcame him. "What happened?" he asked, finally. "What happened on that beach, in the mainframe, before I got there?"

"She spoke to the Matrix. It recognized her because I recognized her. It wanted desperately to keep her there, you know-and I don't know why. I wonder if perhaps it was more real than even I had thought."

They sat together, pondering, each staring at the white as if something would materialize there and answer the questions. The silence was too thick; it reminded Neo of the black space where the voice had told him to-

Zebulon's voice.

That had been Zebulon, who had told him to believe, had helped him find Trinity. 

"You helped me, in the black," Neo said, suddenly. 

Zebulon looked up, seeming mildly confused. "Yes," he said, "yes, that was me. You didn't know that?"

"No."

Neo was silent for a few moments, pondering this. He felt Trinity withdraw next to him, closing in on herself, not allowing herself to ask the one question she desperately needed to know. Neo feared the answer himself. "Well, I guess it all makes sense," he said finally. He shook his head. "I wish you hadn't led us on like that, though. Wasn't there another way?"

Zebulon's eyebrows instantly came together, his face concerned. In that moment, he seemed old. "Led you on? I'm afraid I don't understand."

"Our daughter..." Neo's voice cracked, he felt his throat go dry. 

"You told me you could cure her," Trinity finished for him, her voice cold. "You told me you would give me a cure in the mainframe. But the boy was destroyed before anybody gave me anything." 

Gradually, the crevasses that were the wrinkles on Zebulon's forehead softened. His eyes twinkled. And then, before Neo or Trinity had known how to react, they watched his mouth crack open as he started to laugh. In the corner of his eye, Neo saw Trinity startle, as if she had been physically slapped by the sound.

"I'm leaving," she said, rising. 

"Sit back down," said Zebulon, not unkindly. "I don't mean to be rude. Trinity, have you been checked by your medic since you returned from the mainframe?"

Trinity remained silent, blue eyes narrowed and burning. 

"You're fine. You're baby is fine."

Her voice came out in a whisper: "I don't believe you." 

Zebulon continued. "It true. It's the way it has to be. Your child has to live. The Oracle is waiting for you to have that kid so she can rest."

Neo was ready to leave too, but the mention of the Oracle kept him stationary.

Wordlessly, Zebulon put his hands behind his back. When he brought them back before them, he held a teddy bear, matted in sand. It had one eye. He waggled the bear in front of him, loose grains of sand falling and defining the floor of the construct.

Trinity drew in a sharp breath - loud in comparison to the nothingness - as tears pricked her eyes. "Get rid of that," she whispered.

"It was in the toy, Trinity," said Zebulon, softly. He held the bear out to her and waited the thick minutes until she accepted it reluctantly, hesitantly, as though it might burn her or explode at her touch. It was confusing to Neo, as he'd never seen the thing before. But it was obvious that it meant something to Trinity -- he watched her dust off the sand, turning it in her hands.

"What about the bear?" questioned Neo, his eyes studying Trinity's ashen face.

"Part of the mystery," explained Zebulon. "Her cure. The teddy bear was simply the guise that the program chose to offer. Finding it was no easy task, but I managed to get a hold of it. I was going to give it to her. But it took longer than I'd expected for me to actually gain control, to piece myself together enough to actually manipulate anything. Remember, I was such a tiny part of the program... an essential part, but almost infinitely small. The moment I gathered enough strength, I was going to force it to give her the cure. But it happened too quickly, and this is what I still don't quite understand. It was _him_, the child, who actually gave it to her. In the hope that she would stay on her own accord, I presume." He nodded to Neo. "When you appeared, it got angry. I could feel its jealousy -- it would have deleted her if it couldn't have her, and I was losing control. So the last thing I did before I let go was send her out. I waited as long as I could." His voice dropped, his tone humble. "That's when you...did what you did. What I could never do, could never have done."

Trinity stood, silent, for a few moments longer, absently rubbing the loose threads from where the one button eye had fallen off. Finally, she turned to Neo. "I'm afraid we're only going to be hurt... but I have to know now. I'm going to see Circuit." She turned to leave, Neo nodding his approval.

"You know another way," Zebulon said softly. "Your child is fine, Neo. See for yourself."

And with that he was gone, leaving them alone in the white.

Neo stood and faced Trinity, clasping his shaking hands with hers. "Close your eyes," he whispered.

And there, among the green complexity that was Trinity, he could see her, his daughter, blue and glowing as clear and pure as starlight.

He reached the bottom of his mental whirlpool with a sigh, opening his eyes to the here and now. Soft footsteps behind him announced her presence.

"Hey," he heard her call. "You comfortable? You've been in here for an hour."

"This is great."

Trinity emerged from behind a gauze curtain, took off her shoes and sat behind him on the stones, and dipped her feet in the water on either side of him. He gently rested his head on her pregnant belly as she sluiced water over his arms. Neo wondered if he would feel his unborn daughter kick; she'd grown considerably in past days, becoming stronger, more alert. For the first time in months, Trinity was hungry and ate for two.

The rest of the crew was just as eager for Trinity to give birth as Neo was, especially Morpheus, who had given himself his highest promotion - that of grandfather. Circuit and Trinity grew closer together; Mole was close with Tank, and their friendship slowly helped Tank fill in the space that Dozer had left behind. They would all stay together, all except...the Oracle.

She had died the instant Trinity touched the bear, as they found out shortly thereafter. And although they mourned her, none of them wept. Her death meant certain life, not just for Neo and Trinity's child, but for them all.

Alive was what Neo felt now, feeling the warmth of the water against his skin and the firmness of Trinity's stomach behind his head.

He wondered what she was thinking, and asked her such.

"What am I thinking?" asked Trinity dreamily. "Nothing. Everything." She paused. "I'm wondering about Zebulon," she said at last. "The man. I learned something from him. I learned that I love you, Neo. And I always have, long before this time, this body. But I learned something else, too. I learned that I am not Raven, and you are not Zebulon. When I shook his hand, that first time I met him, I saw it all. Everything, all of who she was." She sighed, then continued. "We have each other, Neo. But he's lost her. His Raven, she's gone, and he is stuck there, forever, without her."

Neo thought for a moment. "I can change that."

"I was wondering if you'd try. For his sake."

"I have this live, this love. You said it right before. I have the one true thing. You. Our child. I have life, real life."

He flipped around in the pool to face her. "Marry me, Trinity," he asked.

She laughed and brushed his damp hair off his forehead. "Oh, Neo, I already have."

***

Somewhere within the Matrix, Zebulon felt something he hadn't felt in a long time. Satisfied, completed. Real. Like he'd just come home after a too-long vacation. Puzzling. He looked up to see something that made his nonexistent heart nearly stop beating. 

She looked bewildered, lost, just a few feet ahead of him on the sidewalk. Then she noticed him, her lips twisting into a wry smile. "What is this, 'Lon? Another one of your pet projects?"

Zebulon smiled. "Yeah." He went to her, put his hand on her shoulder. "Yes, Raven," he nodded. "I guess you could call it that." 

FIN


End file.
